My First Impressions of the Nikon 70-300mm VR Lens

Just wanted to share with other Nikon photo enthusiasts my first impressions of the new Nikon 70-300mm F/4.5-5.6 G-AFS ED-IF VR lens I recently purchased. Since I am not a "professional" photographer, I am not able to afford the fast and very expensive lenses. However, if the lighting is decent and I work on holding steady, my "slow and cheap" Nikon lens certainly do a pretty good job.

Contrary to what I have read elsewhere, I did not find that this lens was too cheaply made for its price (according to some professionals). It does have plastic parts, but it is sturdy and does not give the impression of being fragile and easily damaged. One of the most critical wear parts, the camera connection is all metal.

I had read also that the VR was noisy, but the one I bought is not noisy at all. In fact, the sound it makes is barely perceptible (I have to put my ear near the lens to hear it all) Of course, I will admit that my hearing has never been great, and has not improved with age!

I also found that the lens clarity is excellent in all ranges for my untrained eye, and the VR works great. To give you an idea of how much the VR helped me, below is a crop from one of the first photos I took.

After I cropped it, I enlarged it by 150% and reduced the pixel count to 72 dpi. The photo was taken with a 6 megapixel Nikon D70 with me standing inside the house looking through a plate glass window at a farmer driving his tractor about 100 yards away. The tractor was also moving slowly and coming in my general direction.

The lens was extended to its maximum 300mm, with the camera handheld by me. Since it was a dark, cloudy day, the automatic camera settings were F5.6 at 1/13 of a second. I did not expect much. However, when I viewed the shot I was blown away to see that I could actually read the John Deere lettering on the tractor and make out the features of the farmer-neighbor inside the tractor.

It's not a pretty shot, but certainly much, much better than I could have accomplished hand holding the camera with one of my standard-slow lens. I will probably have my share of disappointments with handheld shots, but this was enough to convince me that all of my future lens must have VR.

I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the VR works well with my Kenko extensions since I can’t afford the macro lens I want yet. The VR worked great with one extension or with two stacked, but not with three extensions stacked. I am not sure why this is the case. However, since the 70-300 lens focuses as close as 5 feet at 300 mm without the extensions, I doubt I will need all three.

I had been eyeing this lens for several months at prices starting at $539. However, in February, I finally got notice that I would be getting paid for some images submitted for a textbook over a year ago, and decided it was now or never (I even convinced my wife). The waiting actually paid off in a way because I was very pleasantly surprised to find the USA 5 year warranty lens in February for "only" $499. If you are interested, click on the link below to get one for yourself. I don't think you will be disappointed.



I mainly plan to use the lens for nature, equestrian, and sports shots here in Kentucky. I will provide an update later on my impressions after using the lens for a while.