ZM-7 300mm f/5.6

Plan B kit lens This is a full frame lens so can be used on FX or film cameras as well as crop sensor (DX) cam eras. Constriction is plastic (except for the drive) including the F-mount flange. This means it is not likely to fair well on a drop. It is, however, very light weight and images do seem to be sharp even when zoomed to 300 mm. If you use it on a Nikon DX camera the camera will crop the image to appear like that of a longer focal length by a factor of 1.5. While optically it is still a 70-300 mm lens the images will appear like a 105-450 mm on a DX camera. It is not exceptionally fast so figure on daylight use. No focus motor is built into the lens so your camera must have the internal focus motor (not available on many smaller body Nikon DX cameras). This lens was often included as the second lens in many older Nikon camera kits. Read full review

Not as good as Sigma When Nikon, the presumed world leader makes a lens that won't even work on their own D3300 with auto focus, one has to wonder if they are trying to turn their brand into junk. I will buy a new camera body that it will hopefully work on, but until then, I put it in a scrap heap camera bag I will never use. I bought it because I trusted the brand. I won't ever make that mistake again.

Properly priced I bought this lens for my home inspection business, and it's perfect for that function. Houses don't move (much), so manual focus is no problem. Low light is seldom an issue, so maximum aperture of 5.6 is OK. It starts going soft at f-stops above f 11 or below f 8, so not a great lens in that regard. It's nice and compact (one reason I chose it), so I can carry it and my camera body, attached, in a small bag. Low light and moving subjects, no. Static subjects in daylight for medium-resolution applications, yes.