Nikon AF-S Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 G ED IF VR

Great Travel Tele- Zoom First off the lens won't match up to my 300mm 2.8 in terms of speed and image quality. However, that thing is impractical to travel around with. That said, I'm very pleased with this lens. I bought it for a surf trip to Fiji and it performed really well. I had good light, so I never experienced it hunting around. Shooting from a boat in the channel, the riders are coming at you fast. The lens kept a good focus on the subject in a rather dynamic environment. The images produced even all the way out at 300mm were quite sharp and with an FX camera at max resolution can be reasonably cropped. I included a couple typical shots that were taken all the way out at 300mm.

Not convincing, a very medium build quality, poor image quality This lens has good aspects too, the reach is nice, especially on a DX format where the 70-300 will actually be equivalent to 150-450. BUT, despite a pretty effective image stabilization, the quality you get from your photos is no sufficient. I'm just back from a photo trip and brought back a few incredible photographs, not a single of those I kept out of the 50 Go (2000+) images shot, came from this lens. My old 70-200 Ai manual focus gives much better results when sufficient light is there. Overall my advise is not to buy this telephoto zoom. at least not at this price, and not if you plan to zoom past 150mm.

For the money it's hard to beat... I have a 80-200mm 2.8 D lens which is built like a tank and performs better than this. But for half the price, a lot less weight, and extra reach to 300mm; this lens can't be beat. It has a pretty good VR system and relatively quick auto focus. It's much lighter than the pro lens and performs almost as well. It's cons are: slower f-stop 4.5 vs 2.8, variable aperture (dependant on zoom), some purple fringing (which can be fixed in post processing), and a more fragile construction. My first copy of this lens rolled off a park bench onto a wood boardwalk (2.5 feet tops), it was even sheathed in a neoprene lens pouch, and it stopped focusing. I tried to live without it, but the 2.8 is too large/heavy to drag around for everyday shooting. The long focal length gives a pretty great out of focus background separation for portraits. I usually bring this, a 50mm and 28mm prime to family outings.Read full review