Back to the topic of Nikon vs Sony in terms of lens quality. Sony leads on wide angles, Nikon leads on telephotos.
This to me is very curious, because the wide throat of the Nikon Z mount is supposed to make it so superior. Yet even here Sony seems to have no trouble competing.
The decision in favor of the dimensions of the Z-mount is first and foremost a forward-looking orientation.
A smaller flange distance and wider diameter gives the lens designers significantly fewer restrictions and more freedom.
This gives them significantly more options to exert a targeted influence where they were otherwise more limited.
Conversely, however, this does not mean that Nikon makes use of the advantages of the mount for every lens design.
So far, this is more likely to apply to a minority of Z lenses, at least those that really make use of it, and Nikon has made special use of it for the Noct and Plena, where some of Nikon's best engineers have invested a great deal of development work.
Examples of where the possibilities of the new Z-mount have been exhausted are the Z 58/0.95 Noct, or the Z 135/1.8 S Plena, which would not have been possible without the possibilities offered by the new Z-mount.
In the case of the Plena, this was primarily achieved via an oversized rear element.
The Z-mount therefore enables constructions that were previously not possible with the F-mount and that would not be possible in the form of the Plena without the option of significantly oversizing the rear element.
However, this does not mean that Nikon exhausts or even utilizes the possibilities of the new mount with every lens.
It is also a question of costs and development work, lenses like the Plena are not created overnight, many years of work and basic research have gone into them.
Although it is ultimately an advertising campaign for the Plena, it does give an insight into how the possibilities of the new Z-mount have been used on the Plena and how the effects and aberrations associated with vignetting have been virtually eliminated.
The decision for the mount is therefore primarily a decision for the future.
It enables Nikon to create optical constructions that were not possible before in this form and with these means.
We will certainly see more of this in the future, tilt/shift would be predestined, but also other constructions.
In Part2 @ 0:52sec one of the engineers talks about how the possibilities of the new Z-mount have been exhausted in the Plena.
There are areas, especially with extreme optical designs such as the Noct or the Plena, where the engineers who have to work with the Sony E-mount are much more limited.
Either such designs cannot be realized at all, or the toolkit to achieve the goals is noticeably more limited.
Where the Nikon engineer can use the full potential of the Z-mount to, for example, almost completely eliminate vignetting and its aberrations by optical means, the Sony engineer has to look for other ways to achieve his goal or have to make more compromises in the designs.
The Z-mount therefore fundamentally allows more radical optical designs and at the same time significantly expands the possibilities for future designs.
Will this be reflected in the wide range of Z lenses?
Probably not, at least in such a way that Nikon really exhaust the possibilities of the Z-mount like they did with the Noct or Plena.
Not in areas where it drives up costs too much, so it will probably concentrate on special optical constructions and the upper price range for the time being.
Where it pays off to invest the corresponding development work and costs.
