NiSi 15mm F4 lens review
As a landscape photographer, a wide angle lens is always in my bag. We use them to capture wide vistas and interesting foregrounds. So when NiSi gave me the chance to test out their 15mm F4 I jumped at the opportunity.
This isn’t going to be a massively scientific review where I take pictures of brick walls to test sharpness, this review is going to look at real world use of this lens for a landscape photographer like myself. All the images in this review are processed to my taste and style.
At first glance, the lens is very well made. I was impressed with the metal lens hood, something i wish more manufacturers done. The lens itself feels really solid and well made. The aperture ring brought me back to the days of shooting on the fuji lenses and I really enjoy using it. One improvement I would like to see here would be a lock for the aperture ring but you also need to bear in mind this is a €480 prime lens so there will be some areas where costs need to be saved.
Lens pictured on my Z6 along with V7 holder - As you can see, no aperture readout displayed
In the above picture you can see how the lens sits on my Nikon Z6 body. It is small, light and really is a joy to use on the camera. It has a 72mm front thread so it fits my 72mm circular kit and also my 100mm square filter series perfectly. Now, this lens is manual focus only and it does not have any electronics meaning you will not get aperture data read back into your camera or metdata in lightroom/capture one etc. This did take a bit to get used to for me but having the aperture ring there gives a clear view of what your shooting at. In terms of the lens being manual focus, I think most landscape photographers use manual focus especially when shooting in low light conditions such as sunrise or sunset so this was not a big deal for me.
The focus ring was smooth and responsive and the aperture ring has a really nice click to it as you rotate, giving you instant feedback and letting you know that the aperture is indeed changing. If this was too smooth when being rotated then I feel you’d struggle to really dial in your aperture.
Distortion is a big talking point on wide angle lenses and it’s something that I do see when shooting at 14mm on my Nikon 14-30 F4. I am pleased to say that distortion is really well controlled on the NiSi 15mm with only minor tweaks needed in lightroom to correct it.
f11, ISO 100, 1/6th second. V7 CPL and 4 stop. Two exposures blended.
The above shot was taken during one of my workshops here in Ireland. In a weird way I enjoyed not having the freedom of zooming, it made me work hard for my composition knowing I had a fixed focal length. We were treated to a stunning sunset. I captured the water using a 1/6th of a second and took a separate exposure for my sky. You can see how straight the horizon is with little to no distortion and I did not need to correct this very much at all in lightroom.
I even took the lens out for an astro shoot. Seeing as I use a star tracker, the f4 aperture does not worry me. The lens did not have much Chromatic Aberration which is always good for a night photographer as stars retain their shape nicely.
Milky way rising over Connemara shot with NiSi 15mm f4 and star tracker
This lens has a unique selling point in that it can produce sunstars at any aperture. Usually, you need to stop down your aperture to f14,f16 etc to produce nice crisp sunstars but the NiSi 15mm can do it from f4 - f22. I am hoping to get out and really test this feature especially in bright sunlight. I spend most of my time in low light and the golden hours of the day when the sun is low in the sky which is not ideal for sunstars. So stay tuned on the review for updated images and any new observations I may have!
You can purchase the lens here
Use discount code “riordan-discount” for 10% off this lens