Ive been shooting with my D850 for years and thought I had the glass situation figured out but my 14-24mm f/2.8 is starting to feel soft on the corners now that I'm printing bigger for a gallery show in Seattle next month. My logic was that the gold ring stuff would hold up forever but these high res sensors are just brutal. I need the absolute sharpest thing for Nikon full frame—maybe a prime? Ive got about 2k to spend and need it before a trip to Rainier in two weeks. Is the 20mm 1.8 S actually sharper than the heavy zooms or am I looking at Zeiss? Every review says something different and I'm just getting annoyed...
To add to the point above, unfortunately your zoom has bad field curvature. Do you usually shoot stopped down to f/8? The Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 20mm f/1.8G ED has much better MTF charts.
I lost a sale once because corner smearing ruined my print. Be careful with zooms; I'd suggest these primes for edge-to-edge resolution:
Unfortunately, that 20mm S lens is for mirrorless, so it wont even fit your D850... major bummer. Honestly, those old gold ring zooms just dont resolve well for 45MP sensors. I was pretty disappointed with my corner sharpness too. For your gallery show, look at these:
- Sigma 14-24mm f/2.8 DG HSM Art for Nikon F
- Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 ZF.2 for Nikon The Sigma actually beats the Nikon zooms in technical tests.
