A good performer

Announced in March 2007, this is one of Nikon's latest DX lenses for digital cameras. I have been using this lens on my D40. Compared with the 18-55mm kit lens, this lens not only extends the zoom range, but it also delivers sharper photos. As far as I can tell, it is the same lens as the previous 55-200mm lens, but with Vibration Reduction (VR) technology which is essential at high zooms. When you press the shutter half-way, the VR is activated and you can actually see a visible difference through the viewfinder! The lens makes a humming sound while the VR system is active. I would recommend that you don't go for the old non-VR lens - pay £100 extra and get one like this with VR. It will make a big difference. The only problem is that now I have experienced the 55-200mm VR, I have started to crave for the 70-300mm VR! The VR system does drain the battery life, so be careful about this when you are out and about - every time you depress the shutter button half way to focus, the VR is activated. Also, I have noticed that when the VR does kick in, it causes a degree of camera shake which may be significant if you have perfectly framed your shot. So for these reasons I have given 4 stars rather than 5.

OK for snap shots

Buy it if you don't mind serious distortion, low contrast and poor resolution if you use it close to maximum aperture. Don't bother if you want high quality prints at a decent size.

Just a flash - until you go multi. Then it's amazing

The SB-800 is easily the coolest flashgun that you can put on your camera's hotshoe. But the amazing control of the Nikon creative lighting system only becomes apparent when you add a second or even third flash. A word of caution, though -- the best features only work on Nikon's most recent cameras.

As a flash in itself, this is well-specified. The Guide Number is 38 at ISO 100 -- not far short of the GN45 of the classic (and enormous) Metz MecaBlitz flashes that were virtually compulsory on professional cameras in the 80s and 90s. It neatly compensates for digital's inability to do TTL flash metering with i-TTL, as well as providing useful features like Flash-Value lock and auto-high FP, for synchronising at any speed. Like its predecessors, it has built in zooming, and modelling flash.

The SB-800 comes with a nice set of accessories -- a stand, gel filters, a diffuser (in addition to the on-flash wide adaptor), and a neat extra battery add-on, which improves recycle time. It also comes with a smart, velcro close bag, which has nice compartments for all the accessories. Neat.

Although it will function on virtually any Nikon camera, the SB-800 is designed to solve the problems created by digital cameras. The biggest of these problems is that Through-the-Lens flash metering, where the light bounces off the film and is measured by the light meter, will not work on digital because -- to put it simply -- digital sensors are not shiny enough to reflect sufficient light. Nikon's original solution was D-TTL, which is found on the SB-80 DX. It was not a winner. The SB-800's solution is called i-TTL, and works by pre-firing the flash so that the camera can measure the light. The exposure is nigh-on perfect, although it naturally slows down the whole process. If you don't like it, you can always select Auto-Aperture, or fully manual. i-TTL works on the D2 cameras and the D200.

The SB-800 really comes into its own when you match it with one, two, or even three other SB-800s or SB-600s. In remote mode, you set the flash to one of four frequencies, and to one of three groups, A, B or C. In master mode (the one actually attached to your camera), you can then change the ratios of each group, and the master flash, from -3 to +3. When you take the picture, all the flashes pre-fire for i-TTL, if that's the mode you selected (you set mode per flash), and you get a perfectly exposed picture. Of course, getting the ratios right is the real trick -- the exposure can be 'right' and it can still look dreadful. You can keep playing with the ratios on the master flash without having to touch the remote flashes. On one of the D2 or D200 cameras, you can keep checking until you're happy.

If this sounds like studio-flash, it is. And it isn't. Once you've shot off 15 flashes at full intensity at the maximum burst rate, you have to let the unit cool down for ten minutes. Compared to mains-powered studio flash, the recycle time is slow, and even powerful NIMH batteries discharge after a couple of hundred exposures. And, powerful as it is for a flash-gun, the SB-800 is weak compared to most studio flash. Nonetheless, for something that you can stick into four big pockets and take with you up a mountain, this is something extraordinary. Add to that the tight integration with the Nikon cameras, and the result is nothing short of revolutionary.

Very sharp lens and VR works a treat

After owning the G and DX 70 300 lenses I have found this one to be very slightly sharper. The fringing is less on this lens than the other two. The 70 - 300 G lens is incredible value and mine was just as good image quality as the DX version. The focusing on this VR version is faster and quieter than the previous versions. VR works great but noticed a strange anomaly with the VR. If you sit down or rest against any fixed object then this reduces the effectiveness of the VR system. Also a useful tip is if you take many consecutive shots standing up you may find one of them very sharp. In fact using this technique I have taken a 300mm shot at 1/4 sec shutter speed tack sharp. I have proved that you must switch off VR when taking pictures (and the 18-200mm) at normal to high shutter speeds as VR takes the edge off of the picture when it is not needed. This lens is great. Stop it down one stop and the whole 70 - 300 is very sharp. I have taken a hand held shot of the moon with VR enabled and got a very nice picture showing the craters and scars across the moons surface. Very pleased with it.

The obvious next step for Nikon D40x owners...

If you own a Nikon D40x with its stock autofocus zoom lens rated at 18-55mm new digital style (equivalent to 26-83mm old style), this is the obvious next step purchase. Rated at 55-200mm new style (83-300mm old style) it's small, light and really does cut out camera shake to allow genuine"point & shoot" at its higher focal lengths, giving you a"tripod-less", perfectly matched combination of two autofocus Nikkor lenses covering a full 18-200mm (26-300mm old style). Just perfect... and, for the price, stunningly good value.

Super ! How did I do without it ???

For this price, this lens is a steal. I checked a lot of reviews and searched a lot of articles in my endeavors to buy a prime lens. I have a D40 and was apprehensive that this would not work with a D40. Luckily and happily, my apprehensions never came to life.

The lens works very well with a D40 also...although you need to focus manually. I am a relative novice and it did not strike me that when you mount the lens on a D40, it will always ask you to set the aperture to the highest value. At first I thought that once I set the aperture to the highest, I would be unable to use f/1.8 - what I did not realise was that the moment you mount this on a D40, the aperture opens to the lowest value ( fully open f/1.8 )

Low light pics are a beauty with this lens, even at ISO 400. I did some candle light photography and I was amazed that I could click photos at ISO 800 without a tripod !!!

If you dont already have this lens, go and get one. If you are at a party and need to take pics, you will NEVER need flash !!!

DOF!!!

Wow! This lens is amazing. I currently shoot a D40 but want to upgrade to a D300, in the meantime I got this lens to play with, even though autofocus isn't supported by my D40.

It's a doddle to use this lens with manual focus although I wouldn't do it with photo's of kids as they'd move too much. However...

This lens is FAST, in low light it's brilliant but most of all, it opens up a world of creativity because you have so much control over the depth of field!

It's cheap to buy, high quality and great fun! Buy it now :)

fantastic lens!!!!

basically,i had done my reseach on nikon 50mm f1.4 and f1.8 for a month..
if u want a good prime lens, f1.8 is enough for you to choose. the pictures are sharp.but f1.4 is even sharper....
both lens are good for me, if you like long term investment I recommend f1.4...
all are depend on your pocket money...

Extraordinary lens made useful by digital

This is a made-for-digital fisheye lens with rapid focussing, incredible depth of field even at f/2.8, and relatively low chromatic aberration. Owners of Nikon Capture who shoot raw NEF footage can convert fisheye images taken with this lens to ultra-wide pan shots, although there is a trade-off of quality and size.

I've owned the DX fisheye for about a year now. Digital technology has now rescued what would traditionally be seen as an effect lens. Despite initial misgivings, this is one of the most useful lenses in my bag, and it's so small and light that it goes with me everywhere.

Fisheye lenses are 'uncorrected' ultra-wide angle lenses. Traditionally they come in two types. A 'true' fisheye gives a circular 360 degree image on the film or sensor, while a full frame fisheye gives about 180 degrees from corner to corner, but fills the entire frame. The Nikon 10.5 DX is full frame, which most people would agree is the more useful variant.

By 'uncorrected' we are talking about rectangular distortion. The lens is in fact heavily corrected for chromatic aberration, although the extreme angles by which light enters the lens mean that there will always be breakup at the edges. The rectangular distortion means that only straight lines which pass through the centre of the lens appear straight. All others are curved, with the curve becoming more prounounced the further you get from the centre.

'Classic' fisheye pictures give the impression that the world is about the size of a pingpong ball, as seen in the film 'Le Petit Prince' and on the cover of Mike Oldfield's 'Hergest Ridge'. As this is a rather specialised application, fisheyes were always seen as a special effect, and relatively few photographers owned one, while still fewer carried it with them. Nikon, therefore, went out on something of a limb by releasing the DX fisheye before many other more general purpose digital lenses.

Two things make this far more useful as a digital lens than the film equivalent would be. First, as already mentioned, Nikon Capture is able to convert from fisheye to ultra-wide. This substantially increases chromatic aberration at the edges, and the results are certainly not pin-sharp at the corners, but the feature does dramatically increase the options. An alternative choice is Panotools for Photoshop. Secondly, the fact that you can shoot as much as you want, preview it instantly, and delete what doesn't work means that you can afford to take far more risks than you ever could on film.

I use this lens for three kinds of shots.

First off, putting the horizon in line with the centre of the lens makes for the least distortion in landscape shots, and non-photographers often won't spot that the picture is fish-eye at all. This messes up the rule of thirds, but there will be so much foreground and sky that I can crop to my heart's content. I can correct for rectangular distortion in Capture or Photoshop if I want, but often this is not necessary.

Second, this is an excellent portrait lens (no, really) for capturing someone in situ. For example, if you put someone in the corner of their office, occupying only the central fifth of the frame, everything in their office will seem to curve round and surround them. There's no need to worry about the sharpness of the subject, because the depth of field is so great. As before, I can crop to my heart's content after the fact. As an alternative, I can just walk up to an individual or a group and press the trigger, without worrying about focussing speed, centre of focus or even composition, because I know that everything will be sharp.

Third, it does sterling service for the kind of effect shots that can't be done after the fact in Photoshop. There's great fun to be had photographing the world from the top of a castle, and (rather more usefully) a lot to be done by standing on a chair and shooting a portrait from above. The close focus range on this lens is a very few centimetres, so you can get special effects of quite small objects.

So, is this special-use lens worth the money? Most of my work is for publication in the press or in advertising campaigns. Local papers are always looking for arresting images, and the fisheye is a good choice for conjuring something special out of a fairly ordinary situation. For advertising it does double service, as a workhorse to capture what otherwise couldn't be got, such as the entire palace of Westminster from over the road, and partly for the same kind of effect shots that go to the press. For the price of an afternoon's shooting (whether you are buying or selling), this is a lens that pays for itself quickly.

For the hobbyist or enthusiast: if you can afford it, this lens is great fun.

Amazing!

Cheap, light to carry, yet with Nikon build quality, and as sharp as a nut (well, as sharp as you'll need!) On my D70 it focusses quicker than some reviewers might suggest. I am really please with it.

Does exactly what it should

Not a lot to say really, the cap fits neatly over the rear of your Nikon lens and protects it from damage. Screws on and off easily and is nice and secure.

Why 4 stars and not 5? The price is a bit high for a piece of moulded plastic IMHO.

the only genuine nikon solution for ultrawide on a DX camera

excellent lens and indeed more pro-like than amateur-like in price but also in specs. The new 14-24 promises to be one helluva lens for the full frame D3, but its premium price is no match for the 12-24 wich is DX only. If you're buying a D3 and don't already have the 17-35 2.8, the 14-24 will be the better solution since it also is decent on DX; otherwise, if you don't go pro with a D3, the 12-24 is excellent (and still can be used on the D3 although with obly half of the pixels). You obviously don't have the extreme distorsion you get with the 10.5 DX fiseye.

Good lens for the money

I am impressed with the image quality of this lens. Previously I was using an ultrazoom camera with a x10 optical zoom, which was the equivalent of a 300mm lens on a 35mm. This lens gives far superior image quality at full zoom. The details are clearer and sharper and there is less chromatic aberration. I have used this lens with my Nikon D50 for handheld shots and camera shake is not evident at 200mm. Forget all the critics who say that this lens is not as good as the expensive high-end Nikkors. It's a good deal for the money, and is a big improvement on the all-in-one ultrazoom digital cameras.