Tack Sharp!!

I am a semi-pro photographer and have had this lens for a few months. I am an event and sports photographer and have used this lens for photographing about ten games at my local professional football club. The pictures have to be sharp and my cameras and lens have to be able to deal with anything the professional game can throw at it, ie low light, changes in light, fast shutter speeds and sharp pictures which need to be uploaed to the football clubs website within minutes of the half-time and the end of the game. If the lens wasn't tack sharp then the pictures just could not be used. This lens delivers all what is needed from it and covers all requirements.

The lens is well balanced and well proportioned. It feels great to hold on the camera body and the VR (vibration reduction) is in my opinion, the best I have used. Its not a cheap lens but if you want professional results you need to spend this type of money.

Thats two great reviews!! If you need more then Digital Photographer magazine had a shoot off against a number of other lenses, including independants and Canon and it won the shoot off. Save up and buy it, you won't regret it!

Ok for the price

The best aspect of this lens is that it's cheap. If you're really trying to do DSLR on a budget, get this.

However in terms of technology and performance this is pretty low level. Buy if you want a decent zoom for quick snaps buy this, if you're seriously looking to take great print, pay more.

Note - I found this 6 months ago on Amazon for £110. Don't pay more.

Superb

I recieved this len as part of the kit with my D70 and the very first thing I noticed was how silently and quickly it focussed in the majority of situations. It seems to know what it is you want to focus on, sheer witchcraft!
The only time it doesn't get it right is if there are no featurse standing out from the scene; i.e. the sky, but this is true to all AF lenses. The Manual/Auto mode is very handy as it allows a manual override at all times, and there is also a fully manual mode.
Pretty sharp, a good all rounder, the wide angle is very good and equates roughly to 35mm on a D70. The 70mm end is also great for portraits and even a bit of sports.

Pin sharp and a great accessory

I cover football matches and you generally need at least a 70-200mm f2.8 lens to get decent images, though even then the lens is not long enough for some shots. With the teleconverter, whilst I lose one stop of light and the lens becomes a f4 lens, its worth losing the light to get a 140-400mm lens.

I used the lens this week on a floodlight FA Youth Cup game and though I had to use a high ISO the image was pin sharp and the lens focused as fast as it would have without the teleconverter. This is a hell of a test for a teleconverter and it shone.

Recommended if you can afford a 300 or 400mm lens as this gives you the range with spending £2,000 upwards.

Spectacular Zoom by Nikon ... Great in Bright Conditions

I owned this lens for more than a year, and due to lack of use, (and a temptation to purchase the Nikon D200 (best purchase I've made for a superb camera!) to replace a great D100) I decided to sell my 80-400VR before the re-sale value of the D100 dropped too low!

I agree with the earlier review, initially I didn't find results, with slower speeds, what I expected, but, on a bright summer's day ... WOW! I have some of the best air display shots I could ever have wished for ... crystal clear! (VR lenses do take a bit of 'getting used to'!) With the addition of a polarising filter, the background deep blue sky and white clouds enhanced my photos superbly! I'm even proud enough to show them at my local camera club!! I miss this superb lens, so, guess what? It's on my want list again! I must say, though, my Nikon 18-200VR is also one of the best lenses I've ever owned. (Thank you Ken Rockwell's superb website for his recommendation!)

The 80-400VR is not the fastest lens in the world (hence the need for bright sunshine) but for it's price it's excellent value! Just make sure you buy your wife/girlfriend a superb present/holiday prior to 'appearing' with this 'monster' lens one day!!

Legendary lens: expensive, enormous, but so crisp...

The 80-200 f2.8 ED is quite simply the best lens I've ever owned. The price might seem high, but it's worth every penny and then some.

I started taking photographs seriously in 1984, and I bought my first zoom lens in 1986. From then on, until I acquired this lens in 2004, I've always known that I had to choose between optimal quality with a prime lens, or flexibility with a zoom. Not any longer. With this lens, things suddenly jump closer. There's no extra haze, no discernible halo, no loss of contrast. If it wasn't for the fact that I often need to shoot wide, I probably would never take this off the camera.

How is this possible?

Basically, because Nikon chose to reject the received wisdom that a zoom lens is always a compromise. They reasoned that there was a market for ultimate quality, and the people who needed it were willing to pay almost any price and put up with any other difficulties in order to get their hands on it.

The result was this lens. To be fair, the price is nowhere near what it once was. The ED (for extra-low dispersion) optics in this lens are now being rolled out into Nikon's more budget offerings, and the street price of this lens has dropped to make way for the new flagship 70-200 VR lens.

The other difficulties are still with us, though - this lens is heavy, and it's enormous. And with a 77mm screw thread, any filters you need to buy will be costly too. What's more, unless you already have a very large camera bag, you'll need to replace it just to be able to get this lens in. This isn't helped by the fact that the relevant hood adds about another 5 cm onto the front - and don't think of shooting without the hood, or you'll suffer from unacceptable flaring from hot lights.

On the other hand, all the things that matter have been sorted out. Unlike budget zooms, this lens keeps its aperture constant throughout its travel. At f2.8 it's fast enough for fairly low light conditions, and, fully open, gives magnificent differential focus. There's a nicely designed Auto-Manual switch on the lens, which is much handier than the one on the camera. There's a useful macro end to the zoom, which is true macro rather than the pseudo-macro found on many cheap zoom lenses. It takes bright, sharp pictures which seem to drip with lucid light.

The lens focusses quickly enough, especially if you curtail its zoom, for which there is a slide-switch. Use with a tripod is perhaps this lens's achilles heel. The current version has its own tripod collar, but colleagues and contacts suggest that it really isn't very good. I don't use it with a tripod myself so I can't comment. However, an improvement is available from Kirk, albeit at a price.

So who is the lens aimed at? It's a professional lens, and the target market is and always has been photo-journalists, press and sports photographers. It makes a fantastic lens for outdoor portraits, though of course you wouldn't even consider using it in the studio. Wildlife photographers will find it a little short, even when used on a digital camera which gives a 1.5x magnification factor, effectively making it 103-300 mm.

To cap it all, using this lens with a D100, D1, D2, F100 or F5 allows you to register with Nikon as a 'professional' and gives you access to their fast-track servicing.

Sorry, didn't I mention that? If you invest in a lens like this, you will need to have it serviced from time to time to keep it in premium condition. If you make your living from pictures, you will find it money well spent.

Utterly sharp

Our Nikon 60mm f2.8 AF D micro lens arrived last Thursday. I’ve been using its early predecessor, the 55mm AF, for some years, so I sort of knew what to expect. My sceptical colleagues, though, were completely bowled over.

On the surface of it, this is an ’ordinary’ 60 mm lens, at f2.8 fairly slow for a prime lens, with a nice smooth feel and a very, very sharp focus at normal distances. On closer inspection, this lens has got two features that you wouldn’t expect. The first is a ’limit/full’ switch, and the second is an extra set of numbers on the distance scale.

Take the lens close to the subject, and it comes into its own. You can bring it as close as a few centimetres away before it bangs up to the end of its travel, and the extra numbers shows 1:1. This means that the size on the negative or CCD is now the same size as the object itself. At normal print sizes, this means that a bee fills most of the picture, and a hair, or a ring, or the hands of a watch, are shown in dazzling detail.

Nikon calls this a ’micro’, but it is in fact a traditional ’macro’ lens, executed almost flawlessly.

There are a couple of problems with earlier ’micro’ and macro lenses, and Nikon have worked carefully to overcome them. First, there is a tendency for the lens to whirr from one end of its travel to the other hunting for a focus -- for example, if something floats in front of the lens while you are working at normal distances, a micro will happily try to focus on it. This is irritating, and will use up your battery quickly. Traditionally the answer is to switch to manual focus -- and Nikon is prepared for that with a nice, solid auto-manual slider -- but this isn’t always appropriate, for example when photographing the aforementioned bee. The solution on this lens is the Limit switch. If you are working at normal distances, switching to limit switches off the macro end of travel. If you are working at macro distances, switching to limit turns off the normal end of travel. Hey presto. Auto-focus suddenly becomes useful again, even at macro distances.

The other problem is that as the lens approaches a close object, less light enters. On my old 55mm you just had to try to account for this somehow -- usually by bracketting. On the new 60mm, the lens informs the camera when it gets near the end of its travel, and the minimum f-stop goes up. At first I thought this was a problem with the lens, like zooms that increase their f-stop as you extend the lens. But, no, it is actually correctly compensating for the changing characteristics.

Beyond that, the 60mm focusses very smoothly, and finds its point of sharp focus much more quickly (and more reliably) than the 55mm did. It has a solid feel, and the picture is utterly, utterly sharp.

I’ve always loved the 55mm micro. With this lens, I’m falling in love all over again.