In my limited experience (with it) this is an excellent lens for what it is. As for video use? Most of the video I'm doing is in low light. The Nikon 50 mm 1.8 will not even come close to my Nikon 24-70 mm 2.8 lens when it comes to automatic focusing while shooting low light video. Sure, I know that manual focus is what I should be doing while shooting video. But there are situations where this is not feasible.

For example I shot this video at a "wedding Party" at a neighborhood bar in Thailand. https://youtu.be/tWA1eqW5UZs
I also used my new Panasonic Lx10 for this video and most of the time I indicate where I'm using the Lx10 and where I'm using my Nikon D750 with the 24-70 mm lens. The distances and situations keep changing so that's why I'm using auto focus.

I need the zoom. A prime lens here will not do. And this 24-70 mm Nikon 2.8 lens walks on water. It's fast and the colors are just out of this world. It's also extremely versatile. In many ways the little Panasonic Lx10 can nearly keep up. It will do 4 k. It will zoom from 24-70 mm (unless one is shooting 4 k when one loses the 24 mm wide angle capabilities of the little camera). But I just love the combination of my Nikon D750 and that 24-70 mm 2.8 lens

I am now using the Nikon D750 full frame camera. I have a Sigma 50 mm 1.4 lens, a Nikon 28-70 2.8 I used for years, a Nikon 17-35 2.8, a Nikon 50 mm 1.8, and my latest and greatest of them all, the Nikon 24-70 2.8.

I used to shoot in U.S. night clubs, as much as 1500 pics in one night, and I used a Nikon D-X with the 28-70 Nikon 2.8. Since that was a DX camera effectively this lens was a 41-105. I was shooting feature entertainers, as many as 19 ladies doing their shows in one evening. This lens was so good, it gave me a decisive edge over every other photographer at these events. I needed a lens that enabled me to get good close up shots, sometimes of a single person or small group and this lens gave me the versatility I needed. And if I needed more reach, I'd just get closer to the action.

But now that I've moved to Thailand I've focused much more on video than still photography. And believe me, I'm struggling with it.

Lately I've been shooting video at the Pattaya Muay Thai Stadium. These fights are broadcast all over the world on the Fight Channel. Here's an example of one of my videos. https://youtu.be/cLrZQ_P7ucA

I'm having to shoot at varying ranges. You will notice that my pal, Big Daddy, becomes very excited when the Double knockout occurs. Luckily my lens is able to automatically focus to this very sudden closeup of Big Daddy. But during these fights I will often focus on people in the crowd, again, at varying ranges. Having longer reach than 70 mm is what I really need, but I just have to adjust to that. And I really do need the 24 mm wide angle of that 24-70 mm lens. Especially when the two fighters are suddenly right on the ropes only 10 feet from my face.

If I could have just one lens, this 24 by 70 mm Nikon would be the one. And even though I already had (and still have) the 28-70, I didn't hesitate a second to spend the big bucks for the 24-70.

I hope this helps.

Many thanks. One problem for me is I live in Thailand. I can buy nearly everything here, but finding reputable people for something like this is going to be like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Also I expect that I will be replacing the LX10 in 2-3 years. I originally bought a Panasonic LX5. Which was a great camera then. But the LX7 was significantly better. The LX7 is still a great camera but it will come nowhere close to my Nikon D750, especially with some of the terrific lenses I have for it. The LX10 offers significantly more resolution and other abilities to what I get from the LX7. It narrows the gap between the Lx7 and the Nikon. It does an especially fine job for video, especially in low light. But I still feel naked without my Nikon D750.

I've searched Ebay, Amazon, etc and cannot find what I need. I have purchased not 1 but 2 PU (faux) Leather cases for 2 Panasonic LX7 cameras from Megagear at Amazon, but both fell apart within a year. I then bought 2 genuine leather cases for the 2 LX7 cameras from Ebay. They were around $100 each, but they are beautiful and have been holding up well.

Best solution I can come up with so far are the genuine leather half cases made by Garitz. These are around $100.00. One of these would dress up the camera nicely while improving the grip on the LX10 (which is not as bad as some reviews make the LX10 out when they compare it to a wet bar of soap). Other genuine leather half cases look cheap. Typical Chinese style as they don't cover nearly as much of the front of the camera as the Garitz (from the pictures).

In my opinion one defect in the Lx10's design is the mounting system for a shoulder strap or wrist strap. The eye holes are so minuscule that one can get not much more than a paper clip into them. The LX7 does not have this problem. So even if I were to buy the Garitz half case, finding a quality neck strap has also been a real challenge for me.

The LX10 comes with a wrist strap (that probably won't last long.) It also comes with a small case that can be hung from the neck. But the stitching that secures the neck straps to this bag has already started to fail on one side, which my girlfriend has been able to temporarily repair for me.

I don't get Panasonic's pushing these wrist straps for the LX10. I want the camera to be hanging from my neck, well protected, and ready to use. I live in Thailand and I'm on a motorcycle every day. These wrist straps simply do not get it.

This design is what I really need. https://www.amazon.com/MegaGear-Ready-Panasonic-Leather-Camera/dp/B06WGLMLT8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501562718&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=Panasonic+Lx10+leather+case&psc=1

I can hang the camera from my neck and quickly access it. It offers a lot of protection. But it's made from PU leather which from my experience will absolutely not hold up.

Many thanks for all your quick replies.

First--Jerry, I have followed your advice and have bought the book you have recommended. So far, I am really enjoying the author's explanations for focusing with the Nikon 750's many options.

Kymarto---Apparently the general consensus of professionals is to use manual focus as you are suggesting. I am reading Richard Harrington's book, "Creating DSLR video, from Snapshots to Great shots", and like you Richard strongly advises shooting manually. Richard claims using a loupe really helps with the manual focusing. With the Nikon D750 I can magnify the image in live view to more precisely set the initial focus but while I"m actually shooting the video I can't magnify what I'm trying to focus on. Richard uses a Zacuto Z-Finder. I'm finding loupes from other manufacturers at amazon.com such as Hoodman. What is your opinion about using Loupes?

Prior to shooting this last fight video, I even experimented in my condo living room with manual focus. I tried to remember what the ring dimensions might be. Then I set my tripod out at various points of my living room and shot experimental short videos using it as a focus point. I then used various f stops in aperture priority so I would get varying depths of fields. Then I'd check the videos to see what points in my living room were in focus and which ones weren't. I thought I might use say an F-8 when I got to the fight and if I set the manual focus to say the midpoint of the ring,that I might get the two fighters in focus either at the far side of the ring or when they were right up on the ropes 15 feet in front of me. But when I actually got to the fight and eyeballed how the distances would work out, I thought..."No way. I am too close to the ring and there's too much of a difference between my camera and the front of the ring compared to the camera and the far side of the ring to make that work out well."

Here's another fight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLrZQ_P7ucA At 5:44 into this video I suddenly noticed that my buddy, Big Daddy, was going crazy when the double knockdown occurred. I instantly switched from focusing long range to up close and personal and luckily the automatic focus locked right in. I don't think I ever could have managed to manually focus in time. However.......I've oftentimes practiced shooting video down at the beach at an outdoor restaurant we frequent. This is in low light. Here, I'll be in nearly perfect focus shooting distant subjects. But if I want to quickly pan my camera to the people at my table, I will oftentimes lose my focus and the automatic focus does not bring my close by subjects into focus. I will then have to adjust manually. So, you are right, the camera does seem to behave erratically in auto focus.

As to the sound quality. The sound level and acoustics at the Max Pattaya Stadium are almost intolerable. The Thai announcer speaks much louder than he should in my opinion. And the music's playing so loudly that the floor is shaking. It's also distorting to a painful level. This is not coming from my camera's internal microphones. I can lower the decibel level in my video editing program. I am using Cyberlink Powermaster 15. I can easily mute the background sound, and I can also edit it by bringing the Soundtrack into Cyberlink's Wave editor. I am not an expert with the audio by any means, but for example, I can lower the decibel level of the soundtrack, but the distortion is still there, and then the background sound of the fight ends up not being realistic.

No matter how proficient I could ever become, there's no way I can compete with the professionals doing video for the Fight Channel. So what I'm trying to do is to give my viewers the sense of actually being there, in the Max Pattaya Stadium itself. I've found in general that Thais, compared to Europeans and Americans, have a much higher tolerance for pure noise. In a similar U.S. stadium, music would normally not be played at such a high level of distortion. Here it seems very acceptable to a live audience that is over 90 percent Asian most of it Thai and Chinese.

I suppose I'm still hoping that the automatic focusing will work. This in spite of a good buddy's advice to me that the Nikon 750 has a mirror and that it won't work nearly as well as my Panasonic LX7 or the new mirrorless cameras now coming out, especially from Sony. So I will be paying close attention to the book I'm now reading about the huge number of automatic focusing options the Nikon D750 offers. But I keep being reminded that using manual focus is the only real viable way of shooting this type of video with my Nikon D750. I am being reminded not just by other people but also through many many hours of my own experimentation stretching over many weeks.

Another possibility that I've entertaining is upgrading from my Panasonic Lx7 to one of the newer Panasonic models. For example there's the Panasonic LX100. This model is about two years old. The camera only has about 12.5 megapixels resolution to my LX7's 10, but the sensor (a 4 3rds format) is much much larger. It has a normal viewfinder so one is not having to use an LCD screen such as I'm doing with Nikon's live view. There's also the new Panasonic LX10, which has a 20 megapixel resolution and (I think) a larger sensor (1 inch) than my Lx7 is using. For what they are these Panasonic are wonderful little cameras. Both the Lx7 and Lx10 use Leica 1.4 lenses while the Lx100 has a 1.7 Leica lens. My Lx7 is easy to stay on focus shooting video in low light situations. But on a good day my Nikon d750 will blow it away. And as good as they are, they won't begin to replace a good slr like the Nikon D750 doing digital stills.

I shot this video at the Max Muaythai Stadium here in Pattaya, Thailand. https://youtu.be/hmxzafwqOfQ

The fights here are broadcast internationally on the Fight Channel. I am sitting ringside in the first row directly behind the Englishmen who are broadcasting worldwide in English. This is roughly 10 feet behind the ropes. In my last video of the fights here, my camera would often focus on the ropes or the men immediately in front of me. I had set my camera so that it would use all 51 focus points. This time, I set the focusing for AFC group mode using 9 focus points hoping I'd be focusing more between the ropes instead of locking on foreground subjects. THis seemed to work out a lot better. But I oftentimes tried AFC auto, which apparently uses 24 focus points in a broad rectangular pattern. My idea again was to focus in between the ropes at the boxers and referee. In live view video I set the camera at AF-F wide, although I also tried it in AF-F normal. I seemed to get the best results using aperture priority at a setting of 5 to 6.3. In the end I settled on 5.

I am using the Nikon 24-70 2.8 lens. I don't think shooting manual is a viable option as the fighters move fast at ranges of 10 to 35 feet away from me. Also when I find interesting subjects up in the stands or someone sitting right next to me there's no way that I can focus quickly enough in manual mode. I also bounce back and forth between shooting digital stills in video. When I shoot the stills, I think I would be getting the best results in shutter priority mode at about 1000th of a second. Also I think I'd be better off using a single focus point or the 9 point group mode.

When I first put this video up on youtube, I had the camera set using a frame rate of 60 instead of my normal 30. I then outputted my file at 1920x1080/30 p (10 mbps) as a Windows Media file This resulted in a file size of around 1.5 gig. Then I thought I'd try to output the file at as an XAVC mp4 at 3840/30p (60mbps). The file size grew from 1.5 gig to close to 9 gig. I believe in places the video is a bit sharper and the colors are more vibrant. In any case I replaced the smaller file with this much larger one.

Any ideas on how I can improve, especially with the focusing? Also, does my going to the much larger XAVC format at 60 mbps make sense?