Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G VR Lens

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The Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED VR II lens mounted on a Nikon D3300 body, extended to 200mm Still and all, though, it's a very useful, low-cost lens...if you patiently tap the shutter button for the best autofocus and hold it very steadily when taking the shot. From about 70 to 140mm, with or without the TC, in or out of crop mode, it's great. I'll get a lot of use from it. Wide open, the Nikon 55-300mm is now at f/5.0, while the Nikon 55-200mm is at f/5.6. Sharpness-wise, both are almost identical, with the 55-300mm slightly outperforming the 55-200mm at f/5.6.

Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED VR II Review Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED VR II Review

Again, the center looks very similar to 200mm, with slightly softer image at f/5.6 that gets sharper at f/8.0 and f/11.0. Sharpness Test – Nikon 55-300mm @ 300mm Corner Frame Detailed specifications for the lens, along with MTF charts and other useful data can be found in our lens database. NIKON D750 + 300mm f/4 @ 300mm, ISO 2200, 1/1250, f/4.0 Lens Handling and Build Weighing in at approximately 300 grams, the AF-S DX Nikkor 55-200mm f4.5-5.6G is very lightweight for a 3.6x telezoom lens, and as seen in the photos below, complements a smaller DSLR like the Nikon D3300 well.

The corners at 70mm look very similar to the 55mm crops posted above, with softer corners wide open getting pretty good by f/8.0. Sharpness Test – Nikon 55-300mm @ 105mm Center Frame I also tried the lens on my D610 in DX mode. It works perfectly with and without the 1.4x Kenko TC, which also autofocuses perfectly, as it does on the D7100. That surprised me. I knew it would autofocus on the D7100 with the TC, but didn't expect almost identical results with the D610 in DX mode. This suggests, to me, that the lens produces images with excellent contrast across the frame. Overall, the lens sharpness performance is pretty good, with a slightly worse performance at larger apertures when shooting at long ranges above 105mm. The remedy is to stop down to f/8.0, which increases image sharpness.

Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED Vibration Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED Vibration

The Nikon 55-300mm VR is a plastic lens with a metal mount, which is easy to carry and handle due to its low weight. Although the lens has a total of 17 optical elements in 11 groups, it weighs only 580 grams. In comparison, the Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G VR lens weighs 800 grams, while the Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G VR lens weights 745 grams. Nikon was able to do this by using a high refractive index (HR) lens element (which allows using a single lens element instead of multiple elements made of standard glass), without compromising sharpness and image quality. The zoom ring is gigantic, occupying almost half of the lens barrel, which makes it easy to zoom in and out with your left hand, while holding the camera with your right hand. The lens shows good resistance to chromatic aberration. Chromatic aberration is present at the wide angle (55mm) when the lens is stopped down considerably, but is very low indeed until around 135mm. At 200-300mm, chromatic aberration begins to become problematic, especially in the corners.

A big 5.5x zoom lens range extends your reach

VR is the second version like my 16-85mm and works very well at 300mm. The only thing I noticed about the VR is that it takes a half-second or so to stabilize, so you have to be a bit patient before you press the shutter. My first comparison, of course, was with the 70-300. I took dozens of pairs of shots of a distant mountain on a clear day to see where this lens begins to lose resolution relative to the 70-300. At 200mm it's very difficult to see any difference. At 250 the 70-300 is only slightly sharper. At 300, there is a difference, but not really very much.

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Since it is a variable aperture lens, the focal length on it changes as you zoom in from f/4.5 to f/5.6 on the long end: Again, the center of the frame is sharp from f/5.6 to f/11.0 with a very slightly softer image at f/4.5. As expected, the extreme corners at the largest apertures do show some softness at 55mm. Stopping down the lens to f/8.0 does improve the situation considerably though. Sharpness Test – Nikon 55-300mm @ 70mm Center Frame There are no distance markings on the lens and the focusing ring is also very narrow and awkward to reach, on account of it being so far forward. There is a positive side to this, however, in that fingers are kept clear of the ring in AF mode. When focusing in low-light, you might notice the lens hunting, which is certainly annoying. Obviously, the 55-300 is not a good candidate for any kind of indoor/low-light photography, unless flashes are used. Lens Sharpness and ContrastThe focus ring feels like a bit of an afterthought, a ribbed rubber ring a quarter-inch wide. The ring offers ninety degrees of focus travel, with hard stops on either end of the spectrum. It's worth noting that there's some slight lens extension during autofocus, with the lens barrel protruding an additional 3/4 inch at 300mm. It's not impossible to achieve accurate manual focus, but it's definitely harder than it needs to be. Clearly, this is a lens that's not intended for anything but autofocusing. That said, autofocus, while dependent on the body, is very accurate. A large rubberised zoom ring fills just under half of the outside of the lens, giving plenty of space for a comfortable zoom action. Unfortunately the lens does not focus internally, extending by a couple of centimetres at close distances. The focus ring also rotates during autofocus, and although it is recessed I caught my fingers on it a couple of times during use, so care needs to be taken to ensure fingers aren't snagged during focusing. This is by no means an over-exaggeration – this is how small the new 300mm f/4E VR really is when compared to its predecessor! Those looking for a reasonably priced, high quality, telephoto addition to their Nikon 18-55mm kit lens can't really go far wrong with this lens, especially if they really want that 300mm focal length.

Nikon 300mm f/4D AF-S Review - Photography Life Nikon 300mm f/4D AF-S Review - Photography Life

Wide open, both lenses have an almost identical corner performance – I cannot see any difference between the two. The same is true when stopped down to f/8.0: Macro results are fair for this lens, with a magnfication of 0.28x, and a close-focusing range of 1.4 meters (around 4 and a half feet). In general, I'm completely happy with this lens. It does what it's supposed to do, and does it well. Color rendition and contrast are excellent, and resolution is also very good up to about 200mm and not bad above that. I'm able to hold it steady even at large focal lengths, but frankly the 70-300 is easier there. And here they all are again, this time fully extended (From left to right: Nikon 18-200mm, Nikon 18-300mm, Nikon 28-300mm):

Nikon 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED VR DX AF-S Nikkor User Reviews

Distortion results for the Nikon 55-300mm ƒ/4.5-5.6 are typical for this class of lens, showing a complicated mix of both barrel and pincushion distortion in the longer range of its telephoto focal length. Between 55-67mm, distortion is slightly barrelled, at around +0.3% in the corners; the lens reaches a kind of parity around 62mm. After this point, the corners show pincushion distortion while the central region shows some slight barrel distortion. At its worst, we note almost -0.5% pincushion distortion in the corners above 135mm; similarly, almost +0.3% barrel distortion distortion throughout the image above 100mm. Corners look all the same to me in terms of sharpness, with a slight amount of visible purple fringing in the corners. If you are trying to decide between these two lenses, the choice is clear – the Nikon 55-300mm is a better lens, mainly because it can reach much further. Here is the difference between 200mm and 300mm focal lengths: Build quality is pretty decent for a consumer zoom. Most of the outer parts are plastic – contributing the light weight of the lens –, but the optical elements are made of high-grade glass. The zoom ring is wide and ridged, and zoom creep is not an issue. On our test sample, the zooming action was a little on the rough side.