Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR DX Zoom Nikkor Lens by Nikon
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Digital camera reviews of Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR DX Zoom Nikkor Lens
Digital camera Review: A breakthrough! A high quality lens that almost all Nikon users will want
Summary: 5 Stars
This lens is quite literally a miracle of technology. It provides sharp, decent performance as a 18mm to 200mm zoom lens. (It provides a 27-300 focal range on a Nikon digital camera due to the 1.5 sensor crop). This is a DX lens, and therefore is designed only for Nikon digital cameras, not film cameras. The fact that it is a DX lens also enables this lens to be lighter and smaller than a conventional "full crop" lens. I have been told by pros that this lens would be a "monster" in size were it not for the fact that it is a DX lens. As it is, it is small and light, and feels great mounted on my D70s.
This is not a cheap lens. It is capable of providing professional-level quality images throughout its range, although it is certainly not the best lens at a given range--no zoom lense is that. The fantastic (yes, I mean it, fantastic) thing about this lens is that over an incredible focal range from wide-angle to telescopic, it provides sharp, bright images. Oh, many prime lenses can produce brighter images, and the much more expensive and larger, heavier 70-200 VR Nikkor provides brighter images with better bokeh, and many wide-angle Nikkor zooms outperform this lens at the other end of its range, but no other lens I know of can touch this lens for its overall range. This lens is capable of producing pleasing, bright, and vivid images througout its range.
One big feature of the 18-200 VR is the Vibration Reduction technology that is built into the lens. This stabilizes the lens and allows it to take good photographs in much dimmer light than would otherwise be practical, and to some extent VR does the same thing that a tripod would do, i.e. stabilize the camera. The VR works, too, contributing to the sharpness of the images. VR is not a substitute for fast glass, which is one reason that very serious photographers will not be junking their heavy professional lenses (such as the incomparable 70-200 VR zoom, for example, or the wonderful 17-55 zoom). A discussion of the shortcomings and advantages of VR is beyond the scope of this review, but suffice to say that the VR on this 18-200 VR lens contributes to its ability to produce very sharp images.
This is the ultimate "walking around" lens, and it is absolutely the lens of choice in many/most situations in which it is simply impractical to either change lenses, or bring along more than one lens. Almost all users of Nikon digital cameras will want to consider this lens. I am blown away with the images that I have been able to achieve using the 18-200VR.
Digital camera Review: A great all around lens! Yea Nikon!
Summary: 5 Stars
Other than the price being somewhat high this is a super lens to have attached to your camera. No more missed long shots because the short lens was in place. Example: hawk on a wire, 18-55 on camera, change lens, hawk gone.
I have experienced no zoom creep while holding the equipment in a downward position and my images are sharp and true to life.
I would recommend this lens to anyone. It's the best (in my opinion).
Digital camera Review: A great all round lens
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this lens together with a Nikon D300. And they truely are a great couple! This lens is at first sight expensive, but taken into account all the lenses it replaces, it's actually fair priced. You get everything from a decent wide angle to a good tele, and it produces sharp images throughout the whole range. The VR function is amazing, and once you've tried it you're hooked! However, be aware of the difference between VR and a large aparture: Both can be used to handheld pictures in low light conditions, but the VR will not freeze motion.
If you only want to buy one lens, this is the one!
Digital camera Review: A great choice
Summary: 5 Stars
This was a perfect deal. Clear description and a shipment with no problems. Communication was not a problem.Digital camera Review: A lens is always a compromise
Summary: 5 Stars
Bad news first: It's slow (in f: number) and not wide enough. It's also soft on the 200mm end. The close focus is handy, but it really only isolates close subjects on the long end where it's a bit soft and the AF struggles because the lens is at f:5.6. Also, it has lens creep which can be an issue when, say using a tripod, or using the left hand to hold a flash off camera, or using the left hand to compose a subject while looking through the viewfinder (all of which happened with the very first shot I published using the lens). It also has linear chromatic aberration on the higher resolution cameras and complex distortion that is impossible to completely take out with Photoshop (DXO does it automatically, though). On my D70s, it does not show as many problems (due to resolution), though they become a bit more apparent on the D200, but not bad enough to complain. I'd avoid the lens on the D2X, because the resolution will show more softness and CA. The CA and softness disappear at f:8, but at f:10, you will start to see softness from refraction. VR helps to compensate for the lens's slowness in a few cases, but then you will notice a lot of subject blur, where the subject moves due to the relatively long exposures. Oh yeah, and there's noticable light falloff at the corners.
Why the high rating? These are all (except light falloff) really nitpicky issues that you can only see when you look at them in Photoshop at 200% or greater. It does almost everything well enough that it's OK for my purposes. I've had it for two months and I've published plenty of shots using this lens with no complaints. Handheld, I can take this and with an untrawide on my D200 or D70s for a very small kit that fits in my daypack and lets me cover more ground, more comfortably, without having to change my lens nearly as often (read: losing shots, gaining sensor dust). DXO will fix image problems automatically (if you have it), and if not, Photoshop does a good job of minimizing the distortion, completely fixes the vignetting and gets 90% of the chromatic aberration, which makes for really beautiful and clean shots. I've set an action in photoshop for this lens, so it's reduced prep time for publishing or printing shots to about two seconds each. If you are printing big or need maximum resolution, avoid the extremems of the lens and it is beautiful. It has more throw than the pro glass (17-55), but lacks the fast maximum aperture. That's the one big reason that it sometimes stays home. Frankly, because of this lens, the 80-200 Af-S stays home pretty much all the time.
If you can live with the lens creep and the slowness, and do not need to work wider than 28mm (equivalent), you will find yourself using this lens more than any other. Personally, I'd rather have an 11-70 superzoom, but until then, this gets a lot of use.