Nikon Nikkor AF-S Fisheye 8-15 mm f/3.5-4.5E ED review - Chromatic and spherical aberration

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Nikon Nikkor AF-S Fisheye 8-15 mm f/3.5-4.5E ED

25 August 2018

Arkadiusz Olech

5. Chromatic and spherical aberration

Chromatic aberration

Photos presented below prove that the Nikkor 8-15 mm doesn’t have any noticeable problems concerning longitudinal chromatic aberration. Even at the maximum relative aperture in areas far away from the depth of field centre you can notice just slight image colouring.

Nikon Nikkor AF-S Fisheye 8-15 mm f/3.5-4.5E ED - Chromatic and spherical aberration

Now let’s check how the lens corrects lateral chromatic aberration – the graph below shows its performance at 8, 12, and 15 mm.

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Significant problems are experienced only at the shortest focal length where the results are near 0.15% meaning a high level of that aberration. With the increase of the focal length the aberration level decreases – at 12 mm it is about 0.11% and at 15 mm it drops to a value on the borderline of low and medium level.

In this category the Nikkor fares a bit better than the Canon which, in the 8-12 mm range, showed results of 0.13-0.15% and at 15 mm its aberration was about 0.11-0.13% so higher than that of the Nikkor.

Nikon D500, RAW, 8 mm, f/4.0	Nikon D500, RAW, 15 mm, f/11.0

Spherical aberration

First images in this chapter don’t feature any focus shift effect. Despite a significant depth of field provided by the tested lens we managed to produce circles of light of sensible size both before and after the focus. You can notice some differences in their light spread but these aren’t very pronounced.

Both these effects and the fact that in the frame centre you get good image quality already from the maximum relative aperture allow us to say that the Nikkor, tested here, doesn’t experience any serious problems related to spherical aberration.