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

Product Information

HRI glass has an index of refraction even greater then 2. ED glass has always had low refractive indices, and glass with higher indices of refraction has been what's been letting lens makers shrink lenses for decades ad higher and higher indices of refraction are created. See Nikon Lens Compatibility for details with your camera. Read down the ", AF-I,""G" and "VR" columns for this lens. You'll get the least of all the features displayed in all columns, since "G" ( gelding) is a handicap which removes features.

As you can see, the vignetting is clearly gone by f/8.0. The same thing happens when shooting at the longest focal length of 300mm. Ghosting and Flare 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: Used on a digital Nikon it gives angles of view similar to what an 85-300mm lens would give on a 35mm film camera. See also Crop Factor. lens distortion filter. These aren't facts or specifications, they are the results of my research that requires hours of photography and calculations on the resulting data. The quality of bokeh this lens produces is pretty good. It is not as good as what the Nikon 70-300mm VR and other exotic lenses such as the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G can do, but still quite pleasing for a lens like this. Here is a bokeh comparison between the Nikon 55-300 and 28-300: Nikon 55-300mm vs Nikon 28-300mm Bokeh

Introduction

If you don't really need 300mm, the 55-200mm VR is the same as this 55-300mm lens, except for the plastic mount and 200mm maximum, for half the price. In the end I think Nikon built a nice, light lens here and, despite some minor niggles, I prefer it over the 70-300 for my purposes (general photography - family & scenics/wildlife - no sports). My 2.0x Kenko TC works on both cameras, but it doesn't autofocus, and holding steady enough to get really sharp images at these very long net focal lengths is difficult. I don't use a tripod, but that might help here. As usual with that particular TC, there is definite image degradation over the sharp 1.4x TC

This is a swell lens, but really not much tougher or more useful than the much less expensive 55-200mm VR. Autofocus is slow in both these Chinese lenses, and will be frustrating for action shots. Keep your fingers away from the front focus ring; it moves all by itself as the lens autofocuses and you don't want to interfere with it. As the lens is zoomed to 135mm, the resolution drops off a little, but is still very good across the frame from wide open, reaching its peak at f/5.6. At smaller apertures, diffraction appears to take a bite out of the sharpness as the lens is stopped down. Finally at 300mm the sharpness at maximum aperture is certainly acceptable, but stopping down the lens to f/8 improves matters noticeably. Here peak performance is found at f/11 where images show good sharpness across the frame. It's better than the smaller and lighter 55-200mm VR, with which this 55-300mm VR has much in common. The 70-300mm VR is a much bigger, better and not that much more expensive FX lens. 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:

A big 5.5x zoom lens range extends your reach

Everything works perfectly on every DX digital Nikon, and especially on Nikon's cheapest digital D40, D40x, D60 and D5000. Zoom action feels just a little bit plasticy with very little stiction; nothing I'd complain about. 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.

If I was working in nasty, dirty areas, I'd forget the cap, and use an uncoated 52mm Tiffen UV filter instead. Uncoated filters are much easier to clean, but more prone to ghosting, and the laminated Tiffens stay together in one piece even after they've been shattered. See Nikon Lens Compatibility for details with your camera. Read down the "AF-S, AF-I,""G" and "VR" columns for this lens. You'll get the least of all the features displayed in all columns, since "G" ( gelding) is a handicap which removes features. At f/8.0, the performance is almost identical. Nikon 55-300mm vs Nikon 55-200mm @ 105mm Corner Frame Although not terribly compact, this optic only weighs 530g. It's light weight should make the lens balance well on Nikon's entry level bodies such as the D40, D60, D3000 or D5000 as well as more advanced bodies such as the D90 or D300 used for testing. Vignetting is typically not a problem on telephoto lenses, however, the Nikon 55-300mm does have a significant amount of vignetting present past 135mm when shooting at the largest aperture. Stopping down the lens to f/8.0 completely gets rid of vignetting though, which is great. Here is an example of vignetting at f/5.0 @ 200mm (left) and at f/8.0 @ 200mm (right):

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More positively, the VR system proved effective in steadying the viewfinder image and was also, like the AF system, almost silent in use. Colors are rendered accurately and the contrast is pretty sharp even at the max aperture. The lens is compact for a 300mm and it's lighter than my AF-S DX 18-200mm which I use as my regular walk-around. I'm sure the new 55-300 will be used as my walk around pretty frequently also. Don't grab your camera by the lens: you might break off the mount! Grab the camera by the camera body, not this 55-200mm's big fat grab ring. While the new lens offers the longer 300mm focal length, the older 55-200mm is a third-stop faster, and when compared, seems to offer slightly sharper and smoother results than the new lens. Results for CA and distortion are similar; the new lens shows much less corner shading

The blue column represents readings from the centre of the picture frame at the various apertures and the green is from the edges. Averaging them out gives the red weighted column. 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 BuildI have personally been a huge fan of the 300mm f/4D AF-S lens and have owned it for many years, loving the lens for its superb optical performance, fast autofocus, light weight, and compact size, making it my ultimate travel lens for wildlife photography – a perfect companion for hand-held shooting. Because it was so good with the 1.4x teleconverter, I practically always kept the teleconverter attached to the lens, making it a very nice 420mm f/5.6 combination. When Nikon finally announced the new 300mm f/4E VR lens, I got very excited, because Nikon completely redesigned the lens. In fact, with close to a 50% reduction in weight and a 30% reduction in physical size, we are not dealing with another redesign or update – this is a completely different lens. 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.