Nikon AF-S FX NIKKOR 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED Vibration Reduction Zoom Lens with Auto Focus for Nikon DSLR Cameras

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Im a professional photographer. Weddings, portraits, concerts, landscapes, urban exploring. I do it all. I shoot with a Nikon D3 (for weddings and portraits) and D800 (landscapes and fine art shots.) I love prime lenses. I started with the Nikon FX "holy trinity" of zooms (14-24, 24-70 and 70-200). But when I looked at my metadata in LightRoom, I noticed I was pretty consistently shooting at around 105mm for portraits, 14mm for landscapes. So I switched to primes and loved them. Until I had to shoot a wedding without a 2nd shooter. I realized I needed a zoom so I got this one. I was expecting to be disappointed, but was really surprised at the quality of shots! It focuses better than the 24-70mm. Shots are as crisp as any prime lens. Portraits at 200-300mm are exquisite. The main drawback, of course, is having the aperture go to 5.6 when zoomed out. I thought this would be a real problem, but on the D3 I can boost the ISO and never miss a shot. Ive used this lens indoors, outdoors, in the sun, in dark churches with no flash, and I have yet to be disappointed.

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I tried hard to think about what you need to know about the Nikon 28-300mm VR II zoom lens. I read some other reviews too; some are great, some are ignorant, and some are just plain wrong or misguided (hint: don’t use this lens on a DX camera! I’ll explain why.) So I will tell you my own take on this lens. It’s going to turn some common themes on their head. And if you’re a novice photographer, I hope I might introduce you to some ideas that you might not have thought deeply about. First of all: This lens is an elegant compromise. It’s stuffed chock-full of compromises, in fact; on-purpose compromises, made by optics engineers with more history and experience than you can possibly imagine; and aided by a small army of computers and a fabrication shop to rival any lens factory on Earth. If you don’t understand this, you have no business buying this lens and complaining about it. Compromise #1: price. I keep seeing folks comparing this lens to a group of 3 other lenses, a kit that costs five thousand dollars and is two or three stops faster. Do you want to drop five bands on three lenses - one of which actually outweighs this beast - or do you want to buy this lens? When you shop for a Ford, do you want to read angry reviews about why the Ford I bought is not as good as all three of my Ferraris put together? No? All right then. This lens is made of plastic, has a plastic aspheric optical element, has no aperture ring, dilates only to f/3.5 at 28mm and f/5.6 at 300mm - and it’s big and clunky and has had some other little corners cut in its manufacture. Compromise #2: Feel, fit and finish. It’s a big old lens. The big zoom ring triples the physical length of the lens and doesn’t feel very nice doing it, it feels like a plastic pipe turning inside another plastic pipe. Which it is. There are three identical, not very nice switches on the left side of the lens. Autofocus (so much for “Silent” wave) is noisy enough to get picked up by the on-camera mic - I can hear it too - and the manual autofocus override ring, which is twitchy as hell and feels lousy, will itself be immediately overriden and re-focused before you are permitted to take a picture, unless you hold down a series of increasingly annoying buttons. Compromise #3: Sharpness. This isn’t a prime lens. It doesn’t have the tack sharp look of a prime lens. It’s chock full of aberration and the corners aren’t as sharp as the center. And more than that: Nikon engineers have played with various chromatic aberrations, distortions, focal planes, and vignetting so that you don’t notice, or so that the unsharp parts have a more-pleasing effect. Off-center green foliage glows unsharply, looking more alive. Reds also focus slightly off, which softens cheeks in portraits. The worst places for sharpness are also the most heavily vignetted so you see it less. Compromise #4: Distortion and vignetting. This lens goes to 300, doesn’t weigh 10 lbs, isn’t 2 feet long, manages f/5.6 at the long end, and zooms to 28 too. Something had to give and what gave was a lot of pincushion at the long end and barrel at the short. I mean a lot - people who don’t know what those kinds of distortion are can see this and comment on it. At worst it can look like a funhouse mirror. Why was this the compromise that was chosen? It’s because it can be mathematically characterized, and, given that, it can be corrected away to any degree of accuracy. Lots of modern Nikon cameras will do it in-camera; if you’re shooting fast continuous and don’t want to tax your processor, or if you don’t have one of those more modern Nikons, one click of a checkbox in Lightroom will correct all the distortion away as well, and more precisely to boot. Vignetting, a word for darkening of the corners, is extremely heavy in this lens; the distortion corrections remove it too, and that’s why Nikon didn’t mind (although Lightroom offers you a second checkbox in case you want to put just the vignetting back.) So what’s good about this lens? The sharpness doesn’t show. If you take a pic and enlarge it to 4x6; or 5x7; or even 8x10 like we used to do because that’s the size Ilford and Kodak used to make their paper in; you’ll see no difference between this lens and any other. What you’ll see is the famous Nikkor optical perfection; nothing else. But if you do what digital makes people do: namely, compose the picture weeks after it was taken, by cropping 95% of a shot away on your desktop computer; and then enlarge this tiny crop; yeah, you’ll see that there’s a certain fuzziness. Who cares? Take a real picture to start, you won’t have that problem. Let’s talk about what this lens can do that a bucket of primes can’t. It can zoom. Zooming is not about bringing distant objects closer, did you know that? (Bringing distant objects closer is what telephoto is about.) Zooming is about helping you compose your shot; about arranging your foregrounds and backgrounds to your liking. Walk back ten feet; zoom in and reframe. Now walk forward twenty feet; zoom out and reframe. You have the same frame, same subject, but 3 different shots there; with three different foreground-background ratios. I find myself using 3 different ranges with this lens. At 28-35 or so, it’s a landscape lens, and a very nice one at that. I don’t use the normal range much. At 85-135, it’s a good lens for close subjects, like flowers, or people’s faces; I find myself landing on 135 a lot, it seems to be a sweet spot for distortion, which isn’t corrected away yet when you’re in the viewfinder. I use 300mm a lot, but mainly for birds, which I enjoy. As a bird lens it’s surprisingly good. Its light - easy to pan with. It can be sharp, but focusing can be a little fussy - the AF sensor on my D750 would really like a little more light, I think. It’s very light and very easy to pan with, and the VR makes it easy to not foul up your shot of a bird in flight. It’s not a fast lens; if you’re someone who needs an f/2 300mm lens, why are you reading this review? One of the things I do notice at 300mm is that the vignetting kind of taxes your sensor at higher ISOs, which means higher shutter speeds or smaller apertures - i.e., during bird photography. The vignetting correction just really applies a not-exactly-radial exposure gradient filter; but the problem is, the corners really aren’t getting a lot of light, so in a way it’s as if you were pushing shadows up. You can expose high-ISO noise in the corners that way, which depending on what you’re shooting can look very odd because it’s not consistent across the frame. Like I said: Nikon makes an f/2 300mm. I’d rather buy a small house. Were you paying attention? Because I just told you this lens does landscapes, portraits, macro (flowers), and birds. And it weighs about a pound. And it’s only about the size of a WWII pineapple grenade. And it has autofocus, 4-stop vibration reduction (more like 3 stops in my hands). And you can get into it for a grand or so - Nikon sold me my new one, with warranty, for the used price because I bought it with my D750 during a bundle last Christmastime. And it gives you that Nikkor look - every color of the rainbow, sharp and pretty and vivid. It’s a good counterweight to my D750; slung over a shoulder it hangs nicely, comes up to the eye easily. It looks ungainly but it’s not as heavy as it looks. I can shoot with it and hike with it for hours with no problem, which I was worried about when I first saw it; and I’m no muscleman. It’d be way too front-heavy for the smaller cameras in Nikon’s range, but it doesnt tip the D750 over, it hangs snug against my chest. And all those compromises I talked about for most of this review? They were designed with FX in mind. If you shoot DX and want a lens with this many compromises built in, get one where the compromises were optimized for DX - may I suggest the 18-200. Enough talk. Have a look at the photos I’ve attached - all taken with this lens in my first week of owning it. If you like ‘em, quit reading reviews and buy this lens and a fast 50mm prime to go with it and never worry about “the missing lens” again. Instead: Go take all the pictures. Because this lens will do it!

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I bought this to go with a Nikon D750 witch needed some extra reach. I already owned the DX version 18-300 F3.5-5.6 for my D7100 and was very satisfied with that lens. The 28-300 did not disappoint and performed very well. If you are a pixel peeper then maybe you need primes instead. For me the lens performs threw out its range extremely nicely.This range for me is exactly what I need for a walk around lens. It is a little heavy but I am used to its weight.I would recommend this lens for out door daylight shots. It shines in good light situation. If you need low light then look for a faster 2.8F stop.

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Awesome lens, of course its not quite as sharp as my 300mm F4, but then thats the pit fall of a zoom lens. However, Im quite happy with the results so far on my d750 camera body. I wanted a good all around lens for my ski trip out to SLC. This lens fits the bill perfectly. Nice wide angle for scenic mountain shots, and the telephoto for close up action shots.

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The build quality of the lens feels solid, not dissimilar to the 24-70 and the 70-200. Unlike those two lenses the distortion is much more noticable at the top and bottom of the zoom range. At 28 there is a noticeable curve and significant vignetting, the distortion can be corrected in post processing. At 300 the chromatic aberration is visible, this too can be largely corrected for in post processing. Focusing is fast and mostly accurate, but be prepared to tweak the focus from time to time when AF just will not cooperate. Focusing issues are a more common occurrence with this lens than with the higher end narrower range zooms. The true selling point of this lens is for travel. If I wanted to match this range I need to carry three heavy lenses, or two heavy lenses and a TC. When trying to travel lighter and still have options when shooting this is a good compromise. This is the second copy of this lens I have owned. I bought the last one for the same reason I bought this one, for travel. I sold the previous one because most of the travel I did for a few years was by car, which meant I could carry as much equipment as I wanted. When not traveling light I ended up leaving this lens stashed away unused. The first one was quiet, this second one right out of the box has a whine when auto focusing. If I was not leaving on a trip I would send it back and hope the next one did not have the whine. Despite the noise of the AF drive, the focusing seems to work as it did with the previous lens. The distortion and chromatic aberration are noticable even on the cameras LCD. I am using this lens with a D4s for what it is worth.

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I am pleased with this lens for its low weight and compactness that rides easily in my spiderholster. For a reasonably, but not super-, sharp lens that is a good package. It gives you a 300mm reach at a reasonable cost. I use it on bird watching trips. A 300mm lens isnt really up to the task, but anything longer would strain my back on long hikes, so its a compromise I am willing to accept. My subject is usually at the center of the image, so although I wish it were a tad sharper, sharpness is adequate. If I were buying this lens today, I would take a close look at the new Nikkor 300mm f/4 PF as a substitute. It is equally light and might be a superior lens. The auto focus is super fast. However, when photographing birds, focusing is usually a two step process and the second step is difficult with this lens. Step 1 is Autofocus to get an approximate focus. Step 2 is Manual focus to fine tune. If you are photographing polar bears, there is no need for step 2, but with birds, step 2 is often necessary because the autofocus gets tricked by leaves and branches. The fine tuning is very difficult and very often impossible before the bird flies away. Such difficulty is to be expected when attempting to photograph birds, which are notoriously uncooperative subjects. However, at f/5.6 there is not a lot of light to work with and it is very difficult to tell when the subject is in focus even if it is perfectly still. The tiniest of nudges seems to turn the focus ring from under-focused to over-focused and the focus ring has a tiny free play whereby it moves a bit before it engages. This manual focusing difficulty might be an issue with digital photography in general rather than with this particular lens. The old manual lenses were by comparison a pleasure to focus. The 28-300 works very well as a macro lens as well. For nature travel, this lens allows you to capture landscapes as well as distant animals. For the price and weight, it is well worth having.

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This is a perfect carry everywhere lense for use on my D810. There are few shots that I cannot frame with it. It fits easily into my case attached to the body. Its not a problem to hang around your neck. If it were f2.8 it would be perfect. (I doubt that they could make it f1.8 which would be incredible and probably cost as much as a small car). I am really happy with quality of the photos I take with it. If you only buy one lense, this would be a great choice. I dont know why you would get a 70-300 with this available. 200mm is just not enough sometimes. I have 5 other lenses and they get used, but not like this one. My 200-500 is awesome, but hardly something to carry around regularly.

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Ive shot events with this lens on a D-800, D-4 and D-810 and have been very pleased with the results. The lens focuses fast and accurately and I havent noticed it "hunting" any more than any of the other lenses I have. The VR works well, though my shutter speed choice is usually constrained by subject motion rather than camera shake. The lens is sharp, even when "pixel peeping" at 100% magnification in D-810 images (36 MP). Sharpness is more likely to be affected by motion (subject or camera) than by the optics in most real-world situations that dont involve a tripod. Related to that is the lens only real downside - its fairly slow - so for action (anything requiring a shutter speed faster than 1/200th sec) its pretty much an outdoor lens unless you want to use a flash. Shooting at high ISO will get you the image, but then the sharpness will be degraded as well - so if you have to shoot action in the dark and need lower noise, an f2.8 lens is a better (and much more expensive) choice. There is quite a bit of distortion, especially at 28 mm, but Lightroom corrects this quite handily (and many cameras can be set to correct this if youre shooting JPEGs). For what its worth, I only shoot raw files. This is my primary lens on my D-810, backed up by a 1st generation 70-200/2.8 VR and a 50mm/1.4.

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I recently bought this as a travel lens before going to Europe. I originally wanted to bring my Sigma 70-200 2.8, Nikon 50mm 1.8, Tamron SP 20-40mm. After deciding that it would be too much to carry along with Manfrotto 190probx and head, I started looking for a travel lens. I read several different forums, and sites and decided on the Nikkor 28-300mm. It seemed to cover most of what I needed for portraits and landscapepanoramas. I brought along my Tamron SP20-40mm, but instead used the 28-300mm the whole time. I realize that the lens is a compromise but I got some really nice portraits and landscapes with it. It is reasonably fast, compactlight, and VR lens stabilization came in handy when a tripod was not an option. I am still going through and editing the many RAW images taken, but here is one of the many that I thought came out really well: [...]

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I bought this lens after doing lots of research about the best travel lens. Was looking for something lightweight and versatile. The lens is lightweight and portable. However, the telescoping lens was a bit stiff. (like several other reviewers mentioned). In addition, the picture quality is worse than expected. I wasnt expecting professional results from this particular lens, but definitely expected more. Tried this lens indoors and outdoors. I ended up returning it, because the quality just wasnt acceptable for me. ):

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