Nikon AF-S VR 70-300 f4.5-5.6G IF-ED

[KentYeti]

Here we go. Seven shots from a day of testing at Capel Fleet.

Please remember I am about 7 days into photographing birds. Masterpeices they are not!

All at maximum 300mm with lens on Nikon D80. All with VR turned off and hand held. I'll add other details later.



In dull light a little Egret lands at Capel Fleet. Image cropped a lot.
1/800th, f5.6, 500 asa.





Still dullish, a Curlew on Sheppey. Medium cropping only.
1/250th, f6.3, 200 asa.





In sunshine. Lapwing almost reflected! Medium cropping only
1/500th, f5.6, 200 asa.





Lapwing on Sheppey in dull light, I'll try and replace it with a sunny shot. Minimal cropping





In late afternoon sunshine, a short eared owl at Capel Fleet. Maximum cropping, the owl was a long way off!
1/1600th, f5.6, 640 asa.




Almost dark as a barn owl starts hunting at Capel Fleet. Medium cropping.
1/500th, f5.6, 800 asa.



1/500th, F5.6, 800 asa.


Another fly by from the barn owl as it gets even darker: well, barn owls do hunt at night don't they! LOL! Medium cropping.

[KentYeti]

I've been caught by the 30 minute rule for editing! (I didn't know about that rule. I do now!).

The second Lapwing photo is now one I shot in sunshine, I originally added the wrong photo. The sunny one now shown is: 1/640th, f5.6, 200asa.

I may get permission to make the above change re the wording I have used. But that won't be for a while as I'm tired and going to bed now.

[RobinP]

I've just bought one of these lenses after reading all the reviews and posts on here, initial impressions are very good, better quality than my previous 55-300 VR.

Here is the first pic I've taken with it, F5.6 at 1/500th, full 300mm, iso 200, distance about 20 yds. A little bit soft around the head but that's probably because I was focusing on the very large bosom!



Robin

[Endrick]

Kentyeti,

I like these very much - especially the owls. I am of the school that says the picture, rather than every last pixel of sharpness, is the important thing and to me these are very good - much better than the lapwing!

Please keep posting!

Malcolm

[KentYeti]

Originally Posted by Endrick

Kentyeti,

I like these very much - especially the owls. I am of the school that says the picture, rather than every last pixel of sharpness, is the important thing and to me these are very good - much better than the lapwing!

Please keep posting!

Malcolm

Thanks Malcolm. Low light photography has been a great like of mine for many years. And with the barn owl shots, they hunt at night, so I was pleased to get some shots of one doing just that. Albeit between dusk and real night. Bit amazed the lens focussed on them. The one flying over the water will be a favourite of mine for a long time. You can't see every detail of the owl, and the light was obviously low, but I find it atmospheric.

Doesn't mean I won't be trying to take bright, sunny and crystal clear shots as well!

[KentYeti]

Had the lens nearly a month and taken a lot of bird photos with it. I guess well over 1,000. Got about 25 I think are OK.

Can do no better than post below a review I've just done for Amazon.

Review

After a lifetime of photography I started as a bird photographer about a month ago.

I felt I needed time to see how I coped with the subject and didn't want to go in too deep at the start with a very expensive lens for my Nikon D80. So I checked all the reviews and went for this Nikon zoom lens. Expecting good results but not perfection: it's place in the pricing structure of Nikon lenses giving a good clue to that!

And that is generally what I have got. A good lens for the closer shots, no doubt about that. Crisp and fairly sharp at 300mm and f5.6 in perfect lighting conditions, i.e the current March sunshine. As the light gets less good the lens still copes fairly well. Again, but only with the closer subjects. VR works well, especially useful to hold a fast moving bird in the centre of the viewfinder.

That was the good news. The bad news is that I find it hopeless for more distant shots of birds in flight, or those perching some distance away. The essential use of 300mm for those subjects means a lot of cropping, and the resultant images after cropping hard show a great deal of lost detail. I can only use the very best of those images, (after a lot of work with Photoshop Elements), by making up a composite photo with four or five images per screen page. I have tried stopping down a little to f8, but the result is the same.

Additionally I was not impressed with shots of the "Big Moon" rising on 19th March. Quite a lot of distortion to the overall image, (it was squashed a bit), and a rather undulating edge all around. Possibly caused in part by atmospheric conditions, but surely not to the extent I photographed. I used a wide variety of settings to take a series of moon rise shots, and all had the same problems.

So, after only a month of bird photography I need to move on from this lens. Probably to the Nikon 300mm f4 with a 1.4 TC. I suspect that combination, which will cost almost 4 times the cost of the 70-300mm lens is the only way I will determine if I can take to bird photography. The considerable shortfalls in the lens being reviewed here is not allowing me a fair test of that.

I've thought about how to rate this lens. Two stars or three. I've gone for three as I feel the numbers of potential users wanting to push it to, and beyond it's design limits, will be relatively small.

[KentYeti]

Just to add that I used the 70-300mm lens today on my main photographic hobby, steam railway locos. In dull weather I got very good results, including at 300mm. Albeit using VR and 1/125th second so I was stopped down to F10 to f11 on 400asa.

So whilst I shan't use it for birds much, it has a place in my growing arsenal of lenses.