Nikon z 24mm 1.8s vs 35mm 1.8s for astrophotography

Hello there, I have been doing research and try to add my first z lens for astrophotography. Because I have heard the 24mm is better than 20mm in coma performance, I am now down to either getting the 24mm or the 35mm. I have tried to look around for comparison and it seems there is no much discussion about this topic. I wonder if anyone here have a copy of both lens and tested how they perform against each other. Many thanks.

I have used both, the 24mm is far better than the 35mm in all use cases, the 35mm is probably the worst S line lens so far produced by Nikon (but still much better than the 35mm f1.8g). The 24mm might have copy to copy variation though, so make sure you buy from a place that offers exchanges/returns if your copy is decentered or shows poor coma/LoCA performance. My wife's 24mmS copy is fantastic, I used the 20mmS for a few trips and it was also fantastic (although too wide for my tastes), we've used had multiple copies of the 50mmS and I used the 85mmS and 35mmS for a few tests early on. The 85mmS is utterly fantastic, the 35mmS is significantly worse in all aspects.

Hi Eric, thanks for your info, I also recently learned that the Sony 20mm 1.8 is a very good lens for astro , I wonder if you have tried that lens and how's that compared with the nikon 24mm.

user 2015 wrote:

Hi Eric, thanks for your info, I also recently learned that the Sony 20mm 1.8 is a very good lens for astro , I wonder if you have tried that lens and how's that compared with the nikon 24mm.

I did use the 20mm 1.8 on my A7s for a little while, mostly for timelapse stuff, it is a very good lens. My copy was slightly decentered, but overall very sharp to the corners with only a little bit of coma and almost no LoCA.

I have the 20mmS and it is great coma-wise. All the few reviews I've read on the 24mmS mentioned that it is actually worse than the 20mmS, not better.

I'm waiting for a fast Z prime wider than 20mm, or a 24mm faster than 1.8...

gingerman wrote:

I have the 20mmS and it is great coma-wise. All the few reviews I've read on the 24mmS mentioned that it is actually worse than the 20mmS, not better.

I'm waiting for a fast Z prime wider than 20mm, or a 24mm faster than 1.8...

It's very unrealistic that Nikon will produce a fast lens wider than 20mm, they've never made a lens faster than f2.8 and wider than 20mm for whatever reason. Likewise I wouldn't expect them to produce a lens faster than f1.8 that is even worth buying for astro, virtually every lens they've made that's faster than f1.8 is extremely poor when used at wider apertures (for astro), the 50mm f1.2S is the most recent glaring example of this. The f1.2S actually has worse sharpness than the f1.8S at all apertures, the f1.2S also has fairly noticeable coma until f1.8/f2 from the examples I've seen so it needs to be stopped down to really be usable anyways. Nikons fast wider lenses have historically been very poor astro anyways, I just can't ever see a reason to shell out the big bucks they'll charge for something like a 24mm f1.4S when it'll probably perform poorly at f1.4 and realistically won't be much better than the 24mm f1.8S when it's shot at f1.8-f2.8.

Yep, fully appreciate the probability of what I'm waiting for:)

If I understand correctly, your solution to this was to use Sony E mount, right?

If I pick the Sony lens, I will use the megadap af adapter, it allows me to use sony lens with AF and vr.