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In love with this lens! I once owned and just sold the Tamron 70-300mm and Sigma 70-300mm( came with my D70 ) just so I would have enough money to buy this Nikon. Its one of the best investments that I have made in camera gear. The Tamron had a problem with purple fringing and soft at the long end. The sigma was soft at the long end also,some yellow fringing and the newer ones dont have VR with the HSM models.
I was tired of the poor quality shots that I was getting from both of them so I went and bought this great Nikon lens. The photos are sharp at the long end and I haven't seen any color fringing at all. And unlike some other reviewers I like the weight.
I take all types of photography from weddings to landscape, sports, birds, and whales. And I have to say I was missing out on the better quality photos. Colors are great, VRII's the best. Dont think that I'll be switching lenses too often because it gets such great pictures!
My suggestion? Save for the Nikon, dont be like me and go with the other brands first only to have to sell them ( at a lower cost!#*? ) just to get better quality pictures with this lens.
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Highly satisfied with this purchase. I did a lot of research and Amazon was the best place to buy it. The turnaround from ordering to shipping to delivery was unbelievable. I love the lens and am 100% satisfied.
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There is nothing to complain about with this lens. It's perfect and the VR is unbelievably good. It's razor sharp and has beautiful colors. Trust me on this one, I have pretty high standards for my tele-zooms and this one has become my new favorite when you consider it's price. I would have gladly paid $200 more for this lens.
Just buy it, you won't be disappointed.
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I bought this lens for $500+ about a year or so ago. It replaced a much cheaper Nikon 70-300mm f/4-5.6G AF Nikkor SLR Camera Lens that fell and broke. But the upgrade has been tremendously worth it. As an amateur enthusiast, what I like about the lens is
-- the Vibration Reduction! This is priceless, because it really helps you dispense with a cumbersome tripod for many low-light situations, and shoot stable pictures just from your hand. Of course, how much it eliminates shake depends on how slow the shutter speed is, but I have taken completely stable photos at 1/10 of a second -- and I know I have shaky hands.
-- the AF-S "silent wave" motor that quickly and silently auto-focuses, and the fact that you can then seamlessly manually tweak that focus using the focus ring, without having to switch from AutoFocus mode to Manual Mode. Not needing to switch modes means you're ready to take that shot when the moment comes along, rather than miss it twiddling with your camera :)
-- and yes, the optics are overall very good, including the "bokeh". It's a Nikon, after all!
However, there are cons too:
-- the weight is substantial, and if like me you're using either the super light film N75/F75 or the D40, the camera tends to feel just a little unbalanced (front heavy) in the hand. More crucially, a heavy camera+lens can make your hand shake more, thus negating to some extent the advantage of the VR in low light situations.
-- the Autofocus can take a bit long -- or fail to achieve focus entirely -- in situations of low light, and especially at the longer end of the zoom spectrum. Since I do a lot of low-light photography, I end up often switching the lens to manual focus mode.
Given the weight of this lens (probably unavoidable to accommodate the 17 high quality lens elements inside, as well as the autofocus motor), you might seriously want to consider whether you want a 70-300mm lens at all. If you shoot mostly wide angles, you would certainly be better off with a shorter range VR lens, which would be both lighter as well as faster (this one opens up only to f4.5).
Quite apart from weight as well, 70-300mm is a bit of an odd range. At the long end, it's really not long enough for bird photography or professional sport photography -- though probably good enough to shoot your kids playing soccer or something. And at the wide end.. it's certainly not wide enough for any situation in which you want to take in the breadth of the view. I probably use it most often for long-range portrait shots. I also end up losing valuable time (and thus altogether missing many photo opportunities) simply switching between this lens and the 18-55mm lens. And fancy equipment all comes to naught if you miss shots because you weren't ready for the moment!
I think for me personally, the way forward will be to buy the excellent Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR DX Zoom-Nikkor Lens, which will replace both this lens and the 18-55mm lens. This lens will serve reasonably well till I buy that, and then probably be resurrected only when full-frame (FX) Nikons become cheap enough to fall in my budget. At that time, I'll love the fact that while the 18-200mm is only a tiddly DX lens, this lens is very much full-frame!
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What a nice lens. I have no regrets buying it. The VR feature makes it a great lens. I take nature pictures, and so far have taken only a few pictures, but what great photos. I have only one thing to say about this lens......Try it, you'll like it!!!
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