The zoom ring is considerable, about one and three-eights inches wide, with well-textured raised rubber ribs. It provides a nicely spaced zoom selection, rotating 90 degrees through its range.
The lens will extend about one and five-eights inches during its zoom range. Zooming action is very smooth but nicely dampened; the lens won't creep at all. The focus ring feels like a bit of an afterthought, a ribbed rubber ring a quarter-inch wide. The ring offers ninety degrees of focus travel, with hard stops on either end of the spectrum.
It's not impossible to achieve accurate manual focus, but it's definitely harder than it needs to be. Clearly, this is a lens that's not intended for anything but autofocusing.
That said, autofocus, while dependent on the body, is very accurate. The lens features vibration reduction, and in practice, it works quite well - see our IS Test section for full details. In short, it doesn't quite offer the 4 stops of shake reduction as advertised, but it does offer some benefit. The lens ships with the HB hood, a rounded hood that offers protection from flare. The lens can be reversed and mounted on the lens for storage; when mounted, it adds 1.
Results for CA and distortion are similar; the new lens shows much less corner shading. The Sigma doesn't offer the extra reach of mm, but it is a third-stop faster at the wider 50mm. Also, about half the price of the Nikon. The mm offers Vibration Compensation VC , and a similar zoom range. The sharpness and CA profiles are quite similar to the Nikon; good in the mid-range, but poorer when zoomed in to its full extension.
Distortion is of course somewhat different, as the lens has a very wide range of focal lengths to contend with, and vignetting is about the same. More expensive than the Nikon, though of course, you get a whole range of wide-angle thrown in as well. Conclusion Considering the price point, you do get a good deal of lens for the money: it's fairly sharp wide open, sharper when stopped-down, and other traits such as tolerance to chromatic aberration, corner shading and distortion are as good or better than you'd expect for a lens in this class.
It's not quite as good as its predecessor mm, but then, it's not just a matter of tacking on an extra mm of focal length; something's got to give, and thankfully, there's nothing that gives too much to make that happen. For the money, the lens makes an excellent companion to an mm for a two-lens system that runs the full gamut of wide-angle to telephoto.
The VFA target should give you a good idea of sharpness in the center and corners, as well as some idea of the extent of barrel or pincushion distortion and chromatic aberration, while the Still Life subject may help in judging contrast and color.
We shoot both images using the default JPEG settings and manual white balance of our test bodies, so the images should be quite consistent from lens to lens. For the ''VFA'' target the viewfinder accuracy target from Imaging Resource , we also provide sample crops from the center and upper-left corner of each shot, so you can quickly get a sense of relative sharpness, without having to download and inspect the full-res images.
To avoid space limitations with the layout of our review pages, indexes to the test shots launch in separate windows. I bought this as an inexpensive backup for my , and was surprised at how close its performance is to the bigger lens. I will now use it almost exclusively with my D and move the to my D bag. My first comparison, of course, was with the I took dozens of pairs of shots of a distant mountain on a clear day to see where this lens begins to lose resolution relative to the At mm it's very difficult to see any difference.
At the is only slightly sharper. At , there is a difference, but not really very much. This lens works perfectly on the D in ordinary mode, crop mode, with a Kenko 1. The only problem encountered as I reached those extreme focal lengths was holding the camera steady enough to avoid slight shake, which is easy to mistake for lack of resolution. I think most of the lack of sharpness at very large net focal lengths is movement, possibly mirror slap, rather than any great deficiency in the lens' optics.
The does somewhat better at these long focal lengths in this respect, simply because it's a heavier lens and, thus, steadier to hold.
I also tried the lens on my D in DX mode. It works perfectly with and without the 1. That surprised me. I knew it would autofocus on the D with the TC, but didn't expect almost identical results with the D in DX mode. This suggests, to me, that the lens produces images with excellent contrast across the frame.
I don't use a tripod, but that might help here. As usual with that particular TC, there is definite image degradation over the sharp 1. So it's probably not the best tool for rapidly moving wildlife and sports shots, as the reviewers point out. But it does work well enough for almost all static subjects, except that it searches for focus at long distance subjects if there is any haze in the air.
It does eventually find focus, especially if I help by manually focusing and then letting autofocus do the rest. Manual focus works better than the reviewers seem to indicate. Yes, I have to switch from AF to M. But once it's switched in, the narrow focus ring is smooth enough to obtain focus that is very nearly as good as when I use autofocus on the same subject.
But, again as the reviewers point out, this is an autofocus lens, with manual only really useful to use initially to help find autofocus at long distances. The new lens also features a weather-sealed mounting plate made from stainless steel, which resist the entry of moisture and dust. This lens is supplied with a cylindrical lens hood HB , which has two latches that must be pushed in when you remove it.
You can simply push the hood on to attach it and the latches will slip into place. Handling The review lens was a comfortable match for the Nikon D body we used for our tests. Attaching the lens to the camera body was straightforward and the solid metal mounting plate fitted very snugly. Without the hood, the lens protrudes mm from the camera body in the 55mm position.
Zooming in to mm extends the inner barrel by a further 50 mm, while fitting the lens hood takes the front of the lens out to mm at full tele zoom. The focusing ring is a 10 mm wide band at the end of the outer barrel. It carries a ridged, rubber grip and rotates a little during autofocusing.
For manual focusing you must slide the switch on the side of the lens barrel to the M position. The zoom ring is located just aft of the focusing ring. Six focal length markings 55mm, 70mm, mm, mm, mm and mm are stamped in white on its trailing edge. No distance scale is provided. Between the zoom ring and the mounting plate are two slider switches.
The upper one switches between auto and manual focusing, while the lower switches the VR stabilisation on and off. No zoom lock is provided — and none appears necessary as we found no slippage when the lens was carried pointing downwards.
On the plus side were the effective VR stabilisation system and the quiet and effective autofocusing system. On the minus side, most test shots appeared slightly soft. Something went wrong.
Please try again in a few minutes. Product variations. Nikon VR Vibration Reduction image stabilization provides 3. Vibration Reduction A Nikon in-lens technology that improves image stability by automatically compensating for camera shake. Lenses that offer VR will feature the abbreviation VR on the lens barrel.
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