Your opinions and experience are important to other photographers. Reviews by community members are the foundation of PhotographyREVIEW.com. Share your experience with other photographers by writing reviews for your cameras and other photo gear. You don’t have to be an expert – everyone’s opinion counts.
Featured Review:
Nikon AF-S 200-400mm f/4G VR Zoom-Nikkor Lens
by aria1117 (Expert)
|
Price Paid: $5000.00 from Cameta Camera Review Date: March 10, 2009 Used product for: Less than 1 month Overall Rating: |
5 of 5
4 of 5
Summary:
After reading many reviews I brought this lens, and What a lens! I spent a day or two testing this lens against my other two long lenses, Pentax 400mm f4 EDIF, and 600mm F5.6 EDIF, both with NIkon adaptors, and it beats the 400mm at f4, 5.6 and as good as the 600mm at f5.6. I also compared to the 85mm f1.8 at f4 and f5.6 on a target (news paper on a brick wall, and change my distance from the target based on the lens). The 85mm lens is one of the sharpest lens around. This is what I found: at 200, 280mm, no major difference at f4 between the 85mm and the 200-400mm vr, although the 85mm lens is slightly more contrasty. At 400mm f4, the 85mm is slightly better, and at f5.6 the two are very similar. I must add that I compared the 85mm lens with the 70-200 vr lens and the former beats the vr lens at f2.8, f4 and f5.6 in all focal lengthes.
But don’t expect miracle here. It is after all a very long lens and need good technique and support to get good pictures. The VR helps but you still can not use it as if you are using a standard lens and do point and shoot. I also learned from my recent trip to Yellowstone, that you need to be sure what are you focusing on as well even though the bisons appear to be 100 yrs away. If you are not focusing on the head, you will not get a very sharp image. This is just what a long lens behave.
I also used it with a 2x converter, it will focus, but I don’t think the camera will be able to focus on the subject well enough. I rarely get a sharp image from it by auto focusing. But if I do manual focusing, it sometimes will give a very shape image. So I think the optics has plenty of sharpness and our technique may be the limiting factor with this lens. My conclusion? I am selling the 400mm and 600mm lenses.
Strengths:
sharpness. Can be used hand hold, so it is extremely useful when you are shooting on the go like most tourists. Well if I were a professional and have more money and assistance from technicians, I would get the 400mm VR, 500mm VR and 600mm VR. But I am not. For me, by having the 200-400mm lens instead, I am not missing much.
well constructed!
Weaknesses:
expensive, especially for someone who is also shooting other formats (large format).
Similar Products Used:
Pentax 6×7 400mm EDIF f4, Pentax 645 600mm EDIF f5.6.
Customer Service:
not needed yet
Related Content:
All Nikon Zoom Lens User Reviews
Nikon Review Page
Nikon Cameras Forum
All Featured User Reviews
All Nikon News & Articles
Congrats, aria1117!
Thanks for a good review. Like you, I am not a pro either and looking forward to buy this lens or the 500F4, not quite decided at the moment.
Bill