Overview

It's big, it's heavy, it's expensive and it's super fast. It also produces wonderful images and the new VR works well. A key message: even my wife could see the images were better than my previous long zoom which was a professional quality lens, that says something. To find out more, keep on reading.

First up, this is a user's impressions and feedback about using this lens, not a review that presents sharpness and chromatic aberration (light dispersal problems) results (for that try the DPReview). I wanted to move up to a modern 70 - 200mm zoom for use with my D200 camera bodies - my old Tamron just wasn't cutting it after almost 20 years. So I looked around at the possibilities and settled on this lens.

First, what does all the mouthful of the lens name really mean?

• AF-S: Auto-Focus Silent Wave Motor - Nikon's fancy autofocus motor.
• ED: Extra-low Dispersion - the glass used in the lens construction that is used to reduce chromatic aberration distortion in the image.
• VRII: Nikon's Vibration Reduction technology. In this lens they claim a 4-stop advantage in reducing vibration. See below for that means.
• 2.8: The maximum f-stop of the lens. This allows the lens to gather a lot of light, which in turn means the ability to shoot at faster speeds. This is why the lens is heavy, there's a ton of glass in this lens.
• G: This lets you know that it works with certain features in the latest digital bodies.

The Nuts and Bolts

Most of the mini reviews for this lens at places like B&H Photo mention how heavy the lens is on a large camera. My view, you want a classy, fast lens - it's going to weigh somewhat more than the cheap kit lens. It isn't much different than my old lens combo so I do not see the weight as a problem. I carried this, two bodies and several other lenses around all day and the weight wasn't a huge issue. If you're smaller than 130lb and don't workout, well, it may be a long day.

The VRII is Nikon's second generation vibration reduction and it works well. There's a switch on the barrel that turns the VR motor on and off, it's quick and easy to set up when you are out in the field. In the old days of film we used a simple calculation to decide whetehr or not we were likely to have problems shooting with a hand-held lens at a certain speed. The rule-of-thumb was 1/the-focallength was the minimum speed to shoot at. So at 200mm you shoot at 1/250th, at 50mm it's 1/60s. The 4-stop VR changes this remarkably, you can shoot 200mm at 1/30 or better (if you are reasonably steady). It works, it's amazing. One recommmendation people have added is to turn off the VR when you are using a tripod. I usually use a tripod but when wandering around trying to do some street photography or to remain inconspicious a tripod is not an option. Having the vibration reduction feature adds to the tool kit and brings extra quality to hand-held shots.

The lens also features "nano crystal coating", Nikon's fancy lens coating to reduce flare and ghosting when shooting into the sun or bright lights. It really does work and is noticable if you are moving up from an older lens technology like I did. You can read more at Nikon's website and there's another Nikon discussion here as well.

One thing to consider when looking at this lens is that it will work just as well on a DX or FX body. The previous version of the lens, VRI appeared to be designed only for DX bodies and had major sharpness issues on the FX chip. But Nikon fixed that with the newer lens. I wanted to have the flexibility of moving back to a FX body and not have to get a new lens or reduced lens quality, so I opted for teh VRII version. There's a significant price difference between the two lens at the time of writing so you ought to consider your potential needs and decide if you are want to spring for the more expensive version.

All the great technology is fantasic and makes the lens a super performer but for me the most significant change was the speed of focus. It's incredible, at first I couldn't quite believe it. The motor is fast and accurate. Really fast. I love it.

For me the combination of fast glass, sharpness, vibration reduction and super fast focusing makes it a total winner. The proof of course is in the final output and you can see some images below to give you an idea of the image quality. These are all jpegs straight from the camera with minimal sharpening. On top of that, as I mentioned at the start of the review, my wife says the images from it look great and she uses a tiny old P&S (when she even remembers to carry it around). For me, that's proof enough of the lens quality.

70-200 Image Gallery

Memorial Day - handheld with VR

Notre Dame at night - with tripod

San Francisco Carnival Parade - handheld with VR

Napoleon's Tomb and Hotel Invalides, Paris - with tripod

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