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This is a great lens, probably over priced because of the Nikon name.I think one could buy a faster off brand of equal or greater quality for less money
I have images at 300 mm where you can see all the small veins in bird feathers. Of course, its not as capable as an 8-10 thousand dollar lens, but its also not as heavy. IMO this is a great value for the money. Sharpness tends to be better when the aperture is closed down just a bit from wide-open which means you need a fair amount of light for the best results. If you take a bit of time to understand it, its a very capable piece of hardware despite opinions in some other reviews. I use a D90.This lens can be extremely sharp all the way to 300 mm. I have seen sharp images at full aperture / 300 mm -- its just tougher to get them with the smaller depth of field.For action, one needs to shoot faster than 1/500 sec and I understand that Nikon users should set auto focusing to continuous and allow the camera to select focal points for best results.VR is very effective.AF is generally good. Great/fast when light is bright and contrast is sufficient.I'm very pleased with the value this lens provides and its captured some wonderful images for me.
I haven't had this long so this is just from one shoot with it, dont take it as my final opinion. The shots were alot better then i thought they would be, 300mm is actually a good range and got me closer then I thought it would. Went out to a rosegarden with this lense in my bag. Not much there where it was really useful, so I started to take pictures of peoples houses from the end of there driveway just to see how well it worked.I don't advise that, im told it could be illegal. A nice improvement over my old 250mm and the vrII is a nice sounding addition though I didn't get to try it out on houses.did score a great shot of a white cat through some guys gate that was abit off. Then I got talked to about trespassing by some drunk guy at 2pm.who drinks that early.
Super lens- good focal distance and VR a real plus. Very capable lens and not so heavy it can't be handheld. Ordered thru Amazon via Cameta Camera (super response thru both).
I have experienced some softness out beyond 200mm while using it on auto-focus, but I am learning to work within the limits of the lens. The shots were all sharp. I need the long zoom and have found that pre-focusing on a point, rather than depending on Auto-focus is much more effective for obtaining the results I am looking for.For my test I used this lens mounted on a D300 to take some pictures of a bell tower. At that point you could actually begin to see the individual pixels. The one caveat I had is that for the tests I ran I used manual focus - I wanted to test the optics not the AF or VR functions since they are not a requirement for using the lens. Also, I am starting to get very interested in Equestrian photography. I own and have used the lens for over 3 months now. I did not lose any significant resolution of the chain link (which I could only make out after I downloaded the pictures) or the objects I was focused upon until I viewing the shots at 200% or greater magnification.
But if I assure myself that it is focused on my target and use the AF lock built into the camera that problem goes away. I then downloaded and examined the photos at high magnification on my PC. Also if I use the lens on manual focus the problem goes away.I am very happy with the lens and highly recommend it. As it turned out there was chain link fencing over the opening to the bell which I could not see, from where I was standing in a parking lot across the street. Given what has been said in some reviews about softness out past 200mm (and my own initial experience) I decided to run some tests for how sharp the pictures could really be. So I have to say that I do not agree with the reviews about how the lens gives poor results out past 200mm.
Because I was specifically testing the lens for sharpness past 200mm (I shot several at 300mm) I focused the lens manually, and used a tripod. That made my test even better.I then took several shots of the bell and the tower, being careful to focus the lens on specific characteristics of the bell. I have obtained excellent results through the entire zoom range.I will say that the AF-S system for the lens seems to hunt a lot when there are a lot of objects in the field of view (i.e., the leaves on a tree while trying to photograph a bird), so it does sometimes focus on something other that what I want - that could have been what the others were complaining about. I believe it is an outstanding value for the price.
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