As a quick update, I did eventually purchase the lens. There's no guarantee that Nikon is going to release a Z equivalent soon and the amount of positive reviews and different image samples were encouraging enough to explore the world of longer zooms.
Two things that worried me, having moved away from 1.4 G lenses recently to Z primes due to excessive fringing at wider apertures, were chromatic aberrations and AF accuracy.
Well, the lens is incredibly well controlled for a previous generation design, the image quality is excellent. Nikon hit a home run with this one, it gives a very pleasing rendering for a zoom lens in my opinion. The lens softens a bit at 200mm compared to other focal lengths but stopping to F5.6 sharpens it up; the lens also has consistent sharpness across the field. There is some distortion but easily corrected in PP. Very impressive optical performance overall.
The AF needed a bit of tweaking and familiarisation on Z7 to get it to work. It seemed less consistent than with the Z primes and it is highly dependent on the quality of light it seems. My lens also appears to benefit from a slight AF fine tune adjustment, -1. We're not talking massive differences in sharpness but it seems to give me better results on average. By dialling in that correction, I am also moving the focus plane slightly forward as the depth of field naturally extends more behind the target anyway at f4. It seems to give me more sharper shots on average, especially for moving targets.
Saying all of the above, it is the first time I've shot with a longer tele lens AND a zoom. It has been a slightly frustrating learning curve for sure, almost returned the lens initially.
Tested it while walking the dog and it is certainly not just a case select any focus mode and go. It really does depend on the size and type of subject! AF-C single gives much better results for distant subjects compared to AF-C Auto, for instance, the size of the AF square is just too large! It certainly got better compared to the disappointing first few attempts with the lens. Dim conditions are a no-go, but the S lenses are challenged very quickly as well, so I think it is more the Z7 as well.
Having used it for any formal shooting so here are two test shots with a moving target at 105mm and f4:
View attachment 150244View attachment 150245