Affordable Nikon FX lenses?

While for a camera with a DX sensor, you have a large selection of good and affordable zoom lenses, when searching for an affordable lens with high image quality for a camera with an FX sensor, you sooner come to a lens with a fixed focal length. That is simple to explain. Lens errrors such as color separation (chromatic aberration), vignetting and distortion increase as you move further from the center of the image. These kinds of lens errors become increasingly visible when you use a camera with a larger sensor. Then the lenses for which the most compromises have been made in the lens design—usually the less expensive zoom lenses—are the first ones to fall short.

Nikon D750 or Nikon D610?

Both the Nikon D610 and the Nikon D750 offer the high image quality that you can expect from a modern SLR camera with a full-format sensor. In particular, the signal-to-noise ratio and the dynamic range are phenomenal. DpReview chose the Nikon D750 as the best camera in the “High-end full-frame camera” category. The Nikon D750 beat out the D810 in DpReview due to the lighter body, built-in WiFi, tiltable screen and higher shooting speed. The Nikon D610 is the price leader for the Nikon FX cameras: for less than 2,000 euros, you have a Nikon D610 including a 24-85 mm kit lens. For the Nikon D750, you pay about 700 euros more, but you get so much extra ease of use in return that we think it’s certainly worth the effort to save for a Nikon D750. The Nikon D750 is currently the only SLR with a full-frame sensor and a tiltable screen. Built-in WiFi, a faster AF with more AF points, more shots per second—the list goes on. You won’t use it for every shot, but you certainly won’t regret investing the extra 700 euros in the D750. If it’s still outside your budget, then enjoy the full-frame image quality of the Nikon D610. In terms of sharpness, noise, dynamic range and color reproduction, the two cameras differ little from each other.

Best lenses for amateurs with a Nikon D750/D610:

The ‘best lens’ for Nikon D750/D610 does not exist.
A few of the 24 lenses that we have reviewed on a Nikon FX camera come close.

You buy an SLR camera for the many creative options that a camera with a unique selection of interchangeable lenses offers. Depending on your capacity (financially and physically), the subject and your ambitions, there are always multiple choices. Our practical and test experience with nearly 25 lenses on a Nikon FX camera lead to this list with good lenses for the Nikon D750 (or D610). We only include lenses that we have reviewed. It’s already difficult enough to compare apples with oranges.

This shot was made in 2014 during the TT in Assen, with the Nikon D4s—the speed devil among the Nikon cameras. Unfortunately, there’s a whole other price tag for this professional camera than for the D610, D810 or D750. For the less fortunate (everything is relative) FX fans, a Nikon D750 is the most obvious choice for action photography.

The best Nikon D750 kit lens

The Nikon D750 is offered as a kit with the Nikon AF-S 24-120 mm f/4G ED VR (2010) and with the Nikon 24-85 mm f/3.5-4.5G ED VR AF-S (2012). The Nikon D610 is primarily offered with the Nikon AF-S 24-85 mm f/3.5-4.5 VR. We haven’t reviewed the 24-120 yet, so we can be brief about any quality differences: we don’t dare to make a statement about it. The list price for the two Nikon lenses differs by a factor of two, although that’s a bit less in practice.
We chose the Nikon 24-85 mm as the kit lens for Nikon D610 or Nikon D750. The center sharpness of the 24-85 mm is very high, as it appears from our review with a Nikon D800E, and at f/5.6, the corners are also very sharp. The focal length range of this lens lends itself to many applications, such as street photography, documentary photography, and bridal photography, where due to the focal depth you’ll choose f/5.6 or f/8. You can thus confidently choose the Nikon 24-85 mm as your kit lens and use the money that you have left over for an investment in a Nikon 20 mm f/1.8G or the Nikon 70-200 mm f/4. Both lenses offer fantastic image quality and are a good supplement to the Nikon 24-85 mm f/3.5-4.5 VR.

A Nikon 70-200 mm zoom on an FX camera delivers beautiful portraits with a razor-sharp subject against a velvet-soft background.

The best zoom lenses for Nikon D750?

We do our best at CameraStuffReview to find the best possible inexpensive lenses that still deliver flawless image quality. Sometimes we succeed in that. Sometimes, we have to confess that you pay a high price for high quality. The Nikon 70-200 mm f/2.8 VR is one of the best lenses—and then we also count the lenses with a fixed focal length—that we have reviewed. If the budget and the weight of the lens do not allow that, then we recommend a Nikon AF-S 70-200 mm f/4 G FX VR ED to any Nikon photographer. With a little less brightness, but qualitatively at least as good and even more inexpensive Nikon AF-S 70-200 mm f/4, the speed and image quality of the D750 also come fully into their own. For amateur photographers, the Nikon 70-200 mm f/4 VR is a dream of a lens, and as far as we’re concerned, an absolute must-have.{insertgrid=380}

Macrophotography with a Nikon D750

If you like taking pictures of very small subjects, then you come to macrophotography. Macro lenses are—also if you use them as a ‘regular’ lens—without exception very good in terms of image quality: they all offer very high, even sharpness from corner to corner and usually also very little distortion. Therefore, macro lenses are also very popular for reproduction photography. If you use a macro lens for photographing a living subject, choose a macro lens with a focal length of at least 100 mm, such as the Nikon 105 mm f/2.8G. That is a perfect macro lens for the Nikon D750.

Portrait lens for Nikon D610

For making a portrait photo, a short, bright telephoto lens with a focal length between 85 and 135 mm is usually used. With longer focal lengths, you stand a long way from your subject, so that you have less contact. With a shorter focal length, you run the risk of a less flattering, long nose. The Nikon AF-S 85 mm 1.8G offers high brightness, a long focal length, shockingly high image quality and an attractive price tag make this bokeh king an ideal portrait lens for any portrait photography. The difference in brightness with the 70-200 mm f/4 is so large that you don’t really have a duplicate if you buy both lenses.

Telephoto lenses for Nikon D610

A Nikon AF-S 70-200 mm f/4 will be outside the budget for some owners of a Nikon D610 or D750. The Tokina 70-200 mm f/2.8, Tamron 70-300 mm and the Nikon 70-300 mm are affordable alternatives, with the Nikon and Tamron 70-300 mm versions offering a bit of extra range as a telephoto lens in addition to a lower price. If you choose one of these two inexpensive telephoto zooms, you lose brightness. Fortunately, both are equipped with built-in image stabilization. I think the Nikon 70-300 mm focuses a bit faster than the Tamron 70-300 mm, and the bokeh is a bit more beautiful, but in terms of image quality, the two lenses are otherwise very similar. Due to the price, our preference leans toward the Tamron, but if that plays less of a role, then we would choose the Nikon.

The best FX lenses with a fixed focal length

Photographing with a fixed focal length is initially perhaps a bit more difficult than photographing with a zoom lens. But you begin to consider composition more deliberately. Lenses with a fixed focal length are also smaller, lighter and often less expensive than zoom lenses. Personally, I would choose a 24-mm lens as my first lens with a fixed focal length. But most photographers choose a 50 mm or 35 mm because the image that you then see through the viewfinder most closely corresponds with the field of view of your eyes. A 50 mm f/1.8 wins on price over a 35 mm f/1.8, while the image quality does not differ very much. A 50 mm f/1.4 is a bit more expensive. We therefore choose the Nikon AF-S 50 mm/1.8G as the best standard lens for a Nikon D610 or D750. 

Low Light

The Sigma 35 mm f/1.4 Art lens fulfills the very highest requirements, even on full-format cameras with high pixel counts like the Nikon D800E. Both mechanically and optically, there is practically nothing to criticize. The Nikon 50 mm f/1.4 is optically slightly less good, but also less expensive. On our wishlist for the ideal low-light lens, there’s only vibration reduction. 

Wide-angle

In this article, nearly the entire series of Nikon AF-S f/1.8G lenses (28 mm, 35 mm, 50 mm, 85 mm) could be named. We would then have a couple of duplicates in terms of focal length, due to overlap with the zoom range of the Nikon 24-85 mm. The Nikon 20 mm 1.8G falls outside the zoom range of the 24-85 mm and offers you a great deal more image for very little money. The difference between 20 mm and 24 mm might appear to be small, but it is not. The broad view is that this affordable, bright ultra-wide angle offers you is much more impressive than a shot made with a 24 mm lens, let alone with 28 mm. It is a world of difference.

Affordable bokeh

An important argument for switching to a Nikon FX camera is the beautiful background blur/boken that you can create with such a camera. You chose a Nikon D750 or Nikon D610 because they are exceptionally affordable for FX cameras, with incomparable image quality. In the higher price class, there are multiple lenses with an attractive bokeh, such as the Nikon 70-200 mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR Nikkor and the Nikon 58 mm 1.4G. The Sigma 35 mm f/1.4 Art offers a beautiful bokeh, but has a relatively short focal length. The Nikon AF-S 85 mm 1.8G offers you high brightness, a long focal length, shockingly high image quality and an attractive price tag make this bokeh king the best bokeh lens for a Nikon D750.