

Despite the Tamron having more homogenous sharpness, it never quite equals the Sigma in the outer zones, although it is a match centrally. It’s relatively mild, but it’s there throughout the aperture range to f/8. Sharpness falls away from the center as it does with the other two, but the other two don’t exhibit the astigmatism of the Sigma. Even wide open, it’s as sharp as the other two at their maximum apertures, and at f/1.8, the Sigma is slightly sharper-at least in the center. As the fastest lens of the three, the Sigma is surprisingly sharp. Also worth a mention are two other Sigmas-the 20mm F1.4 and the 24mm F1.4, at $900 and $850, respectively both offer exceptional performance, with the benefit of ultra-fast maximum apertures.Īll three share very similar sharpness profiles where aperture values overlap. In third place is another 35mm-though this time from Tamron, and it’s the most affordable of the group. Generally speaking, newer Nikkor lenses occupy better positions in our league tables, with the $750 AF-S Nikkor 24mm F1.8G coming in second place, albeit with a similar overall score. While relatively affordable, the top six range from $600 to over $1100 (at introduction). In first place with a DXOMARK score of 45 on the Nikon D850 is the $899 Sigma F1.4 Art. This sample range is very extensive, as we’ve combined wide and ultra-wide in this category still, you can easily compare your own group of lenses. Nikon lenses performed very well, too, making them perfect partners for the D850-though as you will see, Nikon has lost some ground in recent years to third parties. However, in terms of the Perceptual MPix rating, when coupled with the best-performing lenses for it, the Sony A7R IV remains the leader. These are, incidentally, also the highest system (lens and camera) ratings we’ve seen in our database. The best performers are the Sigma 85mm F1.4 DG HSM A, with an excellent 53 points, and the Zeiss Otus 1.4/55 ZF.2 with 52. We’ve updated the optical performance data on a total of 78 prime lenses based specifically on the 45.7MP Nikon D850 sensor.

Broken down like this, it will hopefully give you a clearer idea of which lenses work best on the Nikon D850 and guide you in finding the right lens for your style of photography. We have separated the primes from the zooms in the following sections and categorized them into wide-angle, standard, short-telephoto, and telephoto lenses.

The list includes prime and zoom lenses from Nikon, Sigma, Zeiss, Tamron, and Tokina, and covers focal lengths from 12 to 600mm. For this article, we measured the results for a total of 128 Nikon F-mount compatible lenses on the Nikon D850, and you can now select that camera as an option when browsing our lens database and making your own comparisons. The D850 scored an excellent 100 points, the first full- frame 35mm sensor to reach 100, which secured its number one position in our Sensor performance ranking at the time for that size sensor. In October 2017-Nikon’s 100th anniversary year-we published our Nikon D850 sensor review.
