We had 4 copies of the new Nikon 28mm f/1.8 G AF-S (available to rent today) arrive today and I managed to snag a Nikon D800 just long enough to run Imatest numbers on the 4 copies of the lens. Most impressive!!!

As always, the Don’t Lose Perspective disclaimer applies: this is simply MTF50 numbers for the lens at middle distance. Performance could be different at infinity or very close up. It’s not a lens review, so I don’t comment about how the lens handles, what the images look like, how the bokeh is, does the AF work well, etc. etc. I will comment the lens does have a bit of barrel distortion (1.5%) but several recent Nikon wide angles have allowed a bit of distortion as a trade-off to maintain sharpness.

From a resolution standpoint, the 28mm is good wide open, exceptionally good at f/2.8, and by f/4 is seriously kicking the butt of lenses that cost a whole lot more. The numbers below are averages of the 4 copies tested. I’ll note the variance between copies was very small: it’s a small sample size with just 4 but that’s a good sign. If you want to compare the resolution to others on the D800, I’ve added the 28mm to our D800 lens suggestion database.

Max MTF Avg MTF f/1.8 725 635 f/2.8 980 850 f/4 1170 1000 f/5.6 1130 985