Mr Giggles

I did a test shooting an identical scene with a Nikon D800E with Zeiss 21mm f/2.8 Distagon ZF.2 and my Z7 body  and 20 mm z prime the results with the Z and native Z 20 prime were so much better ...

Mike - curious as you are a optics fan did you ever try out the Fuji 35 F1.4 lens  ? (it is known as the "magic lens"  ) very low element Sonnar based design ..... I used to use it for portraits ...

I sure do like the look of the STF lens ,,,,, what adapter would I need ???

your example perfectly shows my point note how the Sony STF lens when opened wide up - renders the Bokeh as a round area which is changing to a less densely saturated halo which smoothly ...

may not be the best comparison - I agree completely with you I still stand by my statement that the Nikon 1.8 series  cant hold a candle to a properly designed Bokeh monster lens  .... such as the ...

perhaps the optical engineers of Olympus , Sony and in the old days the Smooth Trans Focus (STF) Minolta lens from 1999 - knew what they wee doing when they went thru all the grief to optically ...

I just posted a link - directly above your post - where they did just exactly that

I do - I think it looks much better - no contest I invite the folks at home to look at these examples and see if they agree with me or not : ( be sure to scroll all the way to the bottom of article ...

while I own a Z body and primes lens and find the primes to be astounding - the one fault I find is the Bokeh. Oh .... its not bad ..... it does not really have hard " onion edges - ring bokeh " - ...

the Fair is open back up for the first time since the pandemic  - so off I went with the original Z body and the NIKKOR Z 85mm f/1.8 S Lens .....

The problem with the Fuji system is the focusing speed - many of the lens are really slow. Try this test ,,,,  go into a camera store and check out a Olympus E-M1X with their 300 prime zoom ...... ...

this one is really easy - get a Nikon D500 - its a match made in heaven for your PF lens.

what you want for landscape is a used Z7 and the 20 mm z prime not a F mount Nikon adapted  ...... Native Z glass only ! forget about the zooms for landscape the 20 is a monster shot Fuji all over ...

most folks take photos of the Gorilla or Hippos ..... I decided to take a series of strange and dark images ,,,,,, hope you like them technical : all images shot with Zikon Z7 and the 50 mm f 1.8 Z ...