The lens accepts filters via a standard 67mm thread around the – non-rotating – front lens element, which is great news for those who like to use polarisers or ND grads. Vignetting was also good, with the FX bodies showing maybe two-thirds of a stop wide open at 70mm, a full stop at 200mm. At f/5.6 I’d call vignetting ignorable on FX bodies. On DX bodies its mostly ignorable even wide open. When it comes to lateral chromatic aberration, the lens seems to handle it quite well, even in high-contrast situations. Imatest measured a little more CA at 70mm, 85mm and 105mm compared to 135mm and 200mm focal lengths. Here are the results from my lab measurements: As usual I’ll have a look at the technical data first. I’ve rated the features with a [+] (or [++]), when it’s better than average or even state of the art, a [0] if it’s standard or just average, and [-] if there’s a disadvantage. To give you a better insight as to how this lens compares to its bigger brother I’ve supplied data for the AF-S 70-200/2.8G VR II too, denoted here just as the “f2.8” for short.

Nikon AF-S Nikkor 70 - 200 mm f/2.8E FL ED VR Lens - Black Nikon AF-S Nikkor 70 - 200 mm f/2.8E FL ED VR Lens - Black

That said, I don’t tend to shoot this lens with the tripod collar. The smaller size and weight of the lens means that it is very comfortable to hand hold.In all honesty, I cannot see any differences worth noting between these lenses – all four produce pretty smooth and pleasing to look at bokeh. Vignetting The VR works perfectly, as every other new Nikkor lens, and the image degradation is virtually absent (when in the firsts VR models was better turn it off with the shorter shutter speeds). One can always forget the VR.

Nikon 70-200mm f/4G VR Review - Photography Life

We haven't yet reviewed this lens, but again, it's possible to go with a ƒ/2.8 lens (with image stabilization) for a similar price as the Nikon, so long as you don't need it to have the Nikon brand. Comes with a cheap flexible lens pouch, the lens-shade is included, reversible for transport, and the lens-caps are standard Nikon’s. But there’s no tripod collar ring as with the f2.8. That has to be bought separately for an additional 130 EUR. [-] If you are looking for a good wildlife lens + TC combination, I would not recommend the 70-200mm f/4G VR with the TC-20E III. Yes, you can get decent results on the latest Nikon DSLRs, but it is nowhere close to what you can get with the Nikon 300mm f/4D AF-S + TC-14E II. The latter does not have VR, but if you are into birding, you will be shooting at 1/1000 and higher shutter speeds most of the time anyway and you want VR turned off at such high shutter speeds. VR is only useful for slow shutter speeds, when light conditions are poor. Color Rendition Yes, I do think that the f/4 lens seems a bit more “stable” than the f/2.8 version, though it’s more subtle than I think most people are talking about. Simply put, the f/4 lens is easier to handhold well (especially if you don’t put the optional tripod collar on), so I think some of the “improvement” that many claim over the f/2.8 might simply be that they’re not handling as much mass and girth. Again, the Nikon 70-200mm f/4G VR shows superb performance. It might be a bit weaker in the center, but its corners clearly look better, which is something I did not expect to see.Levels of chromatic aberrations are extremely well controlled for a telephoto zoom lens, only just exceeding 0.25 pixel widths throughout most of the zoom range. At 105mm CA levels increase slightly, although this low level of fringing should be difficult to spot, even in very large prints, and harsh crops from the edges of the frame. In addition to the focus and zoom rings, there is one bank of switches which controls the operations of the lens. As previously described, two switches control the activation or deactivation of autofocus, as well as focus limiting; two additional switches activate or deactivate image stabilization, and which image stabilization mode is selected (passive, for correcting camera movement in the vertical direction only, or active, which corrects in all four directions). The Nikon 70-200mm f/4G VR has more noticeable distortion when compared to the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II. It suffers from both barrel and pincushion distortion at short and long focal lengths and pincushion distortion is most pronounced at 200mm. Here are the measured distortion results from Imatest: IS: yes, the new version 3 of Nikon’s VR system. Nikon claims it gives you up to 5 stops of stabilization, one stop more than with the previous version 2. [+]

Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 70-200mm f/4G ED VR - DXOMARK Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 70-200mm f/4G ED VR - DXOMARK

The official specifications of the unannounced lens remains unknown, but it’s pretty easy to predict that the 35mm will be an f/1.2 lens to match the 50mm f/1.2 and 85mm f/1.2 lenses. There has even been an accidental mention of a “35mm f/1.2 S” on some of Nikon’s social media. When Are These Lenses Coming Out? In terms of features, the Nikon 70-200mm f/4G ED VR has quite a lot to offer. It has an internal focus (IF) mechanism and a Silent Wave Motor, allowing you to use manual focus even when you are in auto-focus mode (denoted with the usual M/A sign on the lens barrel). When I read about Nikon’s announcement of the new Vibration Reduction III technology in the 70-200mm f/4G VR, I was a little skeptical that it would be in any way better than VR II. While image stabilization technology is certainly effective on any lens, I never quite agreed with Nikon’s bold “4 stop advantage” claims in their VR II. In my experience, 2-3 stops is a more realistic number. So when Nikon announced VR III with “5 stops of advantage”, I wondered if it meant an improvement of 1 stop over the realistic 2-3 stops, or another marketing lie. Finally, at 200mm, sharpness in the centre portion of the frame remains excellent at maximum aperture and the clarity towards the edges of the frame approaches very good levels again. Peak sharpness across the frame is achieved between f/8 and f/11 for this focal length. If you don’t need f/2.8, you don’t need the more expensive lens, basically. The 70-200mm f/4G is has no significant flaws to speak of, resolves well on even the highest megapixel count bodies, yet saves you size and weight over its older sibling.Overall, I’d tend to say the 70-200mm f/4G is very good on the high resolution bodies such as the D810, and excellent on the high resolution DX bodies. The slight issues at the corners don’t bother me much for telephoto use. Autofocus performance is snappy, nearly on par with the f/2.8 lens, which is about as good as it gets. Coated optical glass elements certainly help with handling ghosting and flare on the 70-200mm f/4G VR. Take a look at how it handled direct sun when compared to the rest of the group: When shooting at very low shutter speeds at long focal lengths, the mirror slap of your camera will send vibrations to the lens. And because of the length of the lens, those vibrations might result in softer images. With a tripod collar, the setup gets a little more balanced and the mirror slap effect is greatly reduced. For heavier and higher-end DSLRs like D800 and D4, you do not have to worry about this for a couple of reasons. First, the weight of the camera is probably going to be greater than the weight of the lens. As you may already know, the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II was a disappointment for some photographers, because it suffers from a “lens breathing” optical design, where the focal length of the lens varies depending on subject distance. At close distances, the 70-200mm loses quite a bit of the range, which can be a problem for those of us that like to fill the frame with small objects. The Nikon 70-200mm f/4G VR does not have this problem – I measured its focal length and it was exactly 70-200mm, no matter how close or far I focused. Its optical formula is similar to that of the Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 Macro, which also measured about the same. Now why is this important? If you lose some focal length at close distances, it also means that you will have to zoom in closer with the f/2.8 version to get a similar field of view. And as you may already know, longer focal length translates to shallower depth of field, which translates to better subject isolation and smoother bokeh. When comparing bokeh on the two lenses, if I focused with the 70-200mm f/4G VR at 116mm at a distance of about 5 feet between the lens and the subject, the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II required me to zoom in to 200mm to get a similar field of view! That’s a pretty significant difference in focal length… If we use a depth of field calculator, we can plug what a 116mm lens at f/2.8 is like compared to a 200mm lens at f/4, both at 5 feet subject distance. The calculator says that the 70-200mm f/2.8 will yield a depth of field of 0.09 feet, while the 70-200mm f/4 will have 0.04 feet. That’s right – at close distances, the 70-200mm f/4G is actually a better lens to use for subject isolation. Now 5 feet is obviously too close, so let’s do slightly more realistic numbers. When doing my lab tests, I measured that the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II at 200mm is equivalent to the Nikon 70-200mm f/4G VR at 170mm, both at a distance of 13 feet. If I plug those numbers to the same calculator this time, I end up with 0.29 feet of depth of field for both lenses. What this all means, is that the Nikon 70-200mm f/4G yields shallower depth of field than the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G from the closest focusing distance to about 13 feet. Past 13 feet, the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G starts to take over, because the lens breathing effect starts to wear out and the lens recovers most of its focal length. Therefore, at close distances, that one stop advantage of the 70-200mm f/2.8 is really not that of an advantage!