NB: Please note as a DX designated lens this is only compatible with cropped sensor cameras

For a long time I never felt the need to invest in a dedicated landscape lens, I have owned an 18-200mm lens for several years and simply used the 18mm end as my landscape lens, however one day I decided I really wanted to improve my landscape photography and decided to take the plunge on an ultra-wide zoom lens for the purpose. Now I’m just sorry I didn’t take the plunge years ago!

I settled on Nikon’s older 12-24mm lens over the newer 10-24mm lens for a couple of reasons, the main one being the build. While neither lens are solid metal construction on par with Nikon’s pro lenses, there is still a noticable difference between them. The 10-24mm lens has a front element that protrudes as it zooms, much like many of Nikon’s cheaper zoom lenses, lending itself a point of structural vulnerability. By contrast the 12-24 features a solid outer barrel with just a small amount of lateral movement from an inner barrel, this inner barrel though never protrudes as far as the level of the outer one (so any filters you might add are untouched), to all intents and purposes it operates much like an internal zoom lens, giving it greater structural integrity

Equally, although you generally work at narrower apertures for landscape work, I simply prefer the idea of a fixed aperture lens over a variable one, so the F4 designation of the 12-24mm was more appealing to me than the F3.5-4.5 of the 10-24mm

Now, while the 10mm wide end would potentially be more flexible, I have so far found that 12mm is more than enough to get in as much as I could possibly want in a shot, it also has the beneficial side effect that at 12mm, with a wide angle holder it can take the Cokin P size slot in filters without causing vignetting, which made adding ND and ND grad filters to go with this lens a cheaper buying experience. I’m quite sure that 12mm (or more accurately 18mm when you take into account the crop factor) is right on the limit of how wide an angle can be accounted for with this size of filter

The zoom ring on this lens does feels a touch looser than my other zooms, but isn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination and is certainly no cause for concern, I find myself rarely zooming anyway, I bought this lens for the wide end of it’s range and it stays there most of the time, although being able to zoom in that little bit has it’s uses at times

Image quality is of Nikon’s typically high standards, I haven’t, nor will I ever, do studio pixel peeping tests, what I can say though is that I have done a number of test shots in the real world and they’ve all looked great, sharp where it counts and with good contrast and colour rendition (although I more often than not still give my landscape shots a small contrast boost in post processing for a little more impact), absolutely no cause for complaint on the image quality front

Not a lot more really needs to be said from a technical point of view. The first time I took a throwaway test shot with this lens I was instantly impressed, most of my previous landscapes had always lacked a certain something and the extra field of view offered by this lens made me instantly realise the advantages of the ultra-wide angle, being able to get in so much more of a scene instantly gives a much greater sense of scale and avoids disappointing shots caused by a less wide angle clipping off half of what you can see. The other advantage to such a wide angle is that if you are putting focus on a particular subject in your scene, you can get closer to increase depth perception, which can make the shot look more dramatic.

As I said at the beginning of this review, I wish I’d taken the plunge on a proper wide angle lens years ago, between this and a few slot in filters, it’s opened up a whole new range of photography that I’d been missing out on and I now can’t recommend a lens like this highly enough

NB: Please note this review is for the first edition of the Nikon 18-200mm lens, the current version is the VRII, although from what I’ve read it is virtually identical to the original barring the new zoom lock switch so this review should still be applicable

The one thing I did really miss when I switched from a superzoom digital camera to a digital SLR was being able to take my camera out and shoot all ranges from wide to telephoto without having to switch lenses. Most of the time I didn’t find this to be an issue as I would generally be shooting either animals or scenery/general snapshots so could fairly reliably decide which lens I wanted to use for the day before hand, but still I occasionally found situations where I wished my telephoto had a little more on the wide end or my wide angle had that little bit more zoom.

Enter Nikon’s 18-200mm lens, by far my favourite lens for casual/holiday photography. If ever I take my camera out without any specific intention of taking wildlife shots or wide angle landscapes, this lens goes on my camera and typically stays there all day long. It’s really quite liberating not having to carry around a whole host of lenses and change them regularly (something I never like doing in the field if i can help it anyway), the range this lens covers is unparallelled and I’ve caught many a photo I would have missed if I’d had a lesser zoom on while I fumbled round for a longer range lens.

No the image quality isn’t as good as top of the range pro grade glass, but bear in mind the price point and coverage range and quite frankly the quality of photos I get from it seems excellent to me, yes it does lose a bit of sharpness at the extreme ends of the zoom and does suffer some vignetting and  distortion (the latter both being easily correctable in post processing, especially with the latest version of Adobe Lightroom which has a lens profiles), but this is to be expected of any sub professional grade zoom lens, especially one that covers such a vast range (general rule of thumb being that the greater the zoom range, the less reliable the image quality). Quite frankly, when I’m using this lens, I’m not relying on ultimate clarity, I’m looking for decent sharpness, good contrast and all round solid results for whatever I throw at it, and I’ve yet to be disappointed.

The AF and VR are up to Nikon’s usual high standards, this lens focuses quickly and quietly and the VR really takes the edge off a shaky hand, especially useful at the long end of the zoom range. Another benefit of such a large zoom range as far as focussing is concerned is that you can spot a target at the wide end and then zoom in from there, rather than having to find it in the viewfinder at longer focal distances in the first place. You can even use this lens as a sort of pseudo-macro lens, as the minimal focal distance of 1.5 metres means that at 200mm you are still pretty close.

The only real negatives I could pick up on are minor ones and do nothing to take away from the usefulness of this lens. The zoom ring is a little looser than some of my other lenses and the whole thing feels a touch less sturdy, both mainly due to the lens extending in 2 sections, which is necessary to have this kind of zoom range and still maintain a sensible profile. Also if you don’t have the lens locked back at the wide angle the zoom will slowly creep if left angled down, this is a minor point though and nothing that I find of any concern (I have developed a habit of winding all my zoom lenses back in when I’m moving about so I manage to avoid the zoom creep issue by default), the overall build quality is still sound and I have no concerns about it’s durability.

One thing to bear in mind is that the DX designation of this lens means that it will only work properly with a cropped sensor, so won’t be any use if you use a full frame camera, although some full frame cameras do have a DX mode where they drop megapixels in order to be able to use DX lenses. For full frame cameras though Nikon now do a 28-300mm zoom lens, which by all accounts is a similarly great bit of kit and essentally the FX equivalent to the 18-200mm

Overall, if you’re looking for an ‘all day’ lens to cover a wide range of situations and only need ‘great’, not ‘perfect’ results, you really can’t go wrong with the Nikon 18-200mm. This is pretty much the only lens I carry when I’m on a casual day out or travelling (admittedly I nearly always carry my 50mm F1.8 lens with me but that’s simply because it’s so small and light that it barely notices and the low light possibilities are occasionally handy), as it always gives me stellar results and saves me the weight of a bag full of lenses and the hassle of changing them, an all round great bit of kit

This thing is so sharp I swear you could cut yourself on it!

OK, over the top analogies aside, this litte thing is by all accounts one of the sharpest lenses in Nikon’s lineup, ironic in a way given that it’s also one of, if not the, cheapest one too! I bought this several years ago as I had wondered for a while about getting a fast aperture ‘standard’ portrait lens for occasional indoor and general low light work and could find nothing but praise for this lens. Given it’s price point was unbelievably affordable as lenses went (only £80 when I bought it!) and the only alternative at the time was the 50mm F1.4 at about double the cost, I decided that the marginal difference in aperture range wasn’t worth worrying about and thought I’d give it a go

Compared to my other lenses this almost feels a bit archaic, it doesn’t have AF-S so focusing is much noisier, and the lens extends and retracts when it focuses, but it’s such a small lens that it really doesn’t matter and the noise is a non issue as it’s not a lens I’d use for wildlife and is something you just get used to, actually gives it a bit of a ‘retro’ feel to it. The only downside I find to it’s modest size is that unlike every other lens I own, there isn’t really enough to get your hand round to support it. That said it’s so light the camera doesn’t become front heavy and it’s not exactly telephoto range, so you’re not going to be talking massive amounts of camera shake here

As over-emphasised before, the image quality from this lens is amazing, insanely sharp and full of detail, albeit at widest apertures a very small plane of photos will be sharp simply due to the tiny depth of field. This can be both a blessing and a curse, the wide apertures making getting faster shutter speeds without having to ramp up ISO easy, but in doing so giving yourself a very small window of critical sharpness, this is simply a product of how cameras work though and not anything against this lens

While I don’t use this lens very often as it’s range is one I don’t really work at very often, I nearly always have it in my bag ‘just in case’ as it is so small that it takes up virtually no room and you just never know when you might want to do a portrait in low light or with more control over the depth of field, and I know it won’t let me down

NB: Please note this review is not for the latest version of this lens but it’s predecessor, most points still remain valid though and I will try to point out differences where I am aware of them

For several years my faithful 70-300mm lens served me very well for a variety of uses, but over time, more work with captive wildlife at close to mid range and equine eventing led me to want better, faster glass for these applications and the 70-200mm F2.8 was the obvious choice. While sacrificing the 200-300mm zoom range was a potential frustration, the benefits of this lens far outweigh it for me, and I can always throw my 1.4x teleconvertor on it to make it a 98-280mm zoom, which is good enough for me. Worth noting is that while teleconvertors notoriously reduce AF speed and image quality, the 1.4x on this lens makes no noticable difference that I have been able to detect, stringent studio testing would probably show some difference but in the real world it’s simply too negligable to notice

Size an weight are the most obvious difference you notice when you handle a lens like this for the first time, it feels huge and seems to weigh a ton (it’s nearly the same size and weight as my Sigma 150-500 lens!), but once you get over the difference you find that it is in fact extremely well balanced and surprisingly manageable while hand holding.

All that weight comes from the contruction, unlike the plastic construction of cheaper lenses this is solid metal, so it is one solid bit of kit, more than robust enough to take the knocks and bumps that can come with being an outdoor photographer. It is also weather sealed, so while it would still be ill advised to get it too heavily exposed to extreme elements, it isn’t going to suffer if a little rain or dust is in the air.

The tripod collar is a clever design, unlike many lenses which have an all in one collar and foot that requires the lens to be unmounted to be remove it, this lens uses a ‘hotshoe’ style design so that the foot can simply loosened via a thumb screw and slides off independantly of the collar. Personally I never remove the foot, I simply spin it 180 degrees when I’m hand holding and it makes a useful carry handle (I never carry my camera by the body when using a heavy lens, carrying by the lens puts less stress on the lens mount), but if you did find it an annoyance, it’s quick and easy to remove and replace as necessary. Much like the lens itself it is a solid metal construction so is rock solid on a good tripod

In operation everything about the lens just oozes quality. Due to the weather sealing, the zoom is all internal, so the front element never moves, this actually makes a susprising difference to how the lens feels in operation. The zoom and focus rings turn smoothly and evenly (noticably a more smooth action than any of my other zooms) and there are even 4 focus lock buttons around the end to prevent accidental refocussing if you want to keep locked to a certain range. Personally I never use these, but I’m sure some people would find them useful, however I’m guessing not many people as they were removed from the newer revision of this lens

In addition to the VR on/off, VR Mode (panning or all round) and focus switches found on many Nikon lenses, there is also a focus limiter switch. What this does is, when activated, prevents the lens from attempting to focus on anything within 2.5 metres, which can be handy in busy places or for example if you have long grass around you, as it means the lens will never try and focus on an object that passes by right in front of you and cause focus hunting as you try to lock back on to your intended target. Speaking of focussing, being an F2.8 lens, this thing is fast, really fast, it locks on quick and seems to hold well, rare indeed are the times I’ve had any issue with it getting distracted by background elements once I’d locked it on to a target

Another obvious benefit of being an F2.8 is it’s low light capabilities, providing you watch the depth of field for your subjects, you can get better shutter speeds in low light without having to crank up the ISO if you are reaching the limits of your camera’s noise control. I personally don’t like dropping much below F4 if I can help it as the depth of field can become a little too shallow and make it difficult to keep a whole subject in focus (barring occasions where I’m trying ot be creative and that’s exactly what I’m going for of course), but have used F2.8 many times in poor lighting conditions to get usable shots that otherwise would have ended up a blurry mess

I’m not going to go into scientific detail (plenty of other technical reviews have done that) but suffice to say the all important image quality (the reason you paid such a premium in the first place) from this lens is simply fantastic, razor sharp across the whole range even wide open and with great contrast and colour rendition, absolutely no cause for complaint. Actually I have heard some cause for complaint, if you are an FX user, apparently this lens is soft in the corners, not so on DX and that’s all I use. Quite frankly even if I did use an FX camera, on a zoom lens I fail to see what’s so important about the far corners of an image, we use zoom lenses to get closer to our subjects, so if you ask me, a little softness in the corners if anything should just means the subject will stand out more.

I haven’t used the newer revision of the 70-200mm lens, but from what I’ve heard, the only noteworthy differences are that a) it fixes the corner sharpness issue for FX, and b) it suffers a lot more focus breathing (i.e. focal length shortens at closer focal ranges). As far as I know there is no real world difference in sharpness unless you’re doing some serious pixel peeping, so if like me you’re a DX user with no designs on upgrading to FX in the foreseeable future, a good condition second hand copy of the previous gen 70-200mm lens that I have reviewed here is probably as good, if not a slightly better buy than the new one, as it doesn’t suffer as much focus breathing, real world optical performance is the same, and it will inevitably be a bit cheaper

All in all, I love this lens, it’s rock solid, a fantastic performer, and the quality of the images it produces speak for themselves. Were it not for the fact I so often need the 500mm end of the focal length spectrum for wildlife work, this lens would rarely leave my camera

I originally bought this lens to accompany me and my then trusty Nikon D80 on Safari in Kenya and Tanzania since I could not afford a larger zoom and I was avoiding Nikon’s 80-400mm lens anyway as they still have yet to update it with AF-S and newer VR technology. This was one of the best lenses I have ever owned and in my opinion more than worth the price of admission, the only reason I eventually sold my copy was because I now own a 70-200mm F2.8 lens and a 1.4x teleconvertor, so can cover about the same range with higher quality glass and wasn’t using the 70-300 any more

Sure this is not pro grade glass but for somebody who isn’t reliant on absolutely tack sharp images to get paid, the quality of images you get with it is absolutely superb and never disappointed me. For a long time it was my ‘go to’ lens for the majority of my wildlife and equine photography and the range it covers meant I’ve even managed to use it for scenery shots when I either didn’t have with me, or couldn’t be bothered to switch to, a wide angle lens for the sake of one or 2 shots. As with most zooms, the sharpness does drop a touch at the long end of the zoom, but it’s negligable, you really wouldn’t notice unless you examine your shots with a fine toothcomb on the computer and all the results I ever had from it were always great quality

As usual with Nikon, the autofocus and VR are fantastic, it focusses quickly and accurately and the VR really helps steady your shots (much as I might like to think otherwise, I don’t have the steadiest hands in the world!)

The build quality is also excellent, the zoom ring has a good feel to it, not too stiff and not too loose and the whole thing just feels good and solid, in the several years I owned it I never managed to do any damage to it despite a few knocks here and there

All in all, a fantastic telephoto lens for anyone who doesn’t need to or simply can’t afford to splash out on longer range or higher grade glass, it served me incredibly well and was easily one of my favourite and most used lenses until I upgraded.

I had been tempted to buy a teleconvertor for a long time as I always loved the range of my 70-300mm lens, but I just couldn’t bring myself to go back to it for anything other than casual photography since acquiring the almighty 70-200mm F2.8.

So, the 1.4x convertor seemed the ideal solution, but forums speaking of loss of quality and slower autofocus due to the resultant light loss with teleconvertors had always made me nervous about dropping £300ish on one, however after some reassurance from a pro wildlife photographer that the official Canon and Nikon 1.4x telecovertors aren’t a noticable detriment to picture quality, I finally decided to give it a go

All I can say is wow, absolutely no drop in picture sharpness or autofocus speed that I can detect, neither does the viewfinder look any dimmer to my eyes. I’ve used this for a couple of all day wildlife photography workshops and various other times, it’s been a priceless addition to my kit bag, giving me that little bit of extra range that the 70-300mm lens used to without having to pass up the sheer quality of the 70-200mm F2.8 lens

I have no other fast lenses to test it with to validate it’s performance across the Nikon range, but based on my experience so far, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it for anybody with an F2.8 or F4 lens who wants the the flexibility to add that little extra reach without having to splash out on a whole second lens. That’s not to mention the fact that this takes up next to no space in the kit bag compared to the size of a whole other large lens! An added benefit is that this convertor is guaranteed to work with any F2.8 or F4 lens, unlike the 1.7x and 2x convertors which are only guaranteed to work fully with F2.8 lenses, so the day I have a magic windfall and can finally afford that holy grail the 200-400mm F4 lens, I know it will be fully compatible

I have seen other comments to the effect that it’s a shame the 1.4x doesn’t come with a carry pouch like it’s bigger brothers, but it’s so compact I can’t really see the necessity, mine either lives in a small pocket in my camera rucksack or just in my pocket ready to be fitted to my camera as needed.

All in all, very happy with my purchase and wouldn’t leave home with my 70-200 lens without this little gem to back it up

I had always told myself I’d never use anything other than Nikon glass with my camera, but since I desperately wanted a super long range zoom lens and Nikon seem to have no intentions of updating their 80-400mm lens to include AF-S in the foreseeable future, with their only alternative being the 200-400mm lens which was way beyond my budget, I decided to look at alternatives. The so called ‘Bigma’, Sigma 50-500mm lens seemed a popular alternate choice but I simply didn’t like the idea of trying to hand hold a lens with that length of zoom without some form of image stabiliser. A tripod is the obvious answer to that dilema, but there are times it simply isn’t practical. Sigma’s 150-500mm OS lens then seemed the perfect alternative when I heard about it and I snapped one up as soon as I could find one in stock when they were released.

The construction of the lens is good and solid, it has a fairly stiff zoom ring compared to my Nikon lenses but I don’t consider that a particularly bad thing in all honesty as it feels sturdy with it which is what I want from such a sizable lens. In keeping with the sturdy build quality though, It does weight nearly 2Kg so be prepared to build up some arm strength or invest in a monopod to take the load off your arms! One thing that continually confuses me is the fact that the zoom ring operates the opposite way round to my Nikon’s lenses, but that’s something I’ve gotten used to. The autofocus is fast, accurate and is nice and quiet, it does seem to get distracted from the target more easily than my best Nikon lenses if trying to track a fast moving object such as bird in flight with backgrounds like trees for it to ponder, but the difference is only minor and no lens is perfect when tracking fast subjects with distracting backgrounds. To be fair I’ve never used a Nikon lens at 500mm so it may be as much a product of the difference in zoom range between my best Nikon and this as the quality of the focus tracking.

The image stabilisation seems competent, I can’t really compare to my Nikon lenses as this monster has a 220mm longer reach than my next nearest Nikon zoom, so it’s hard to tell whether the OS is less effective than Nikon’s VR technology or whether it is on par but my less than steady hands simply show up more movement at the longer focal ranges, I’m leaning towards the latter. One thing I will say though is that compared to the virtually silent VR technology in my Nikon Lenses, the OS in the Sigma is pretty noisy, when it’s in use you can hear it quite obviously whirring away and I’ve even had people standing next to me ask what the noise is, however it’s not loud enough to notice beynd immediate vicinity so is more of a mild annoyance than something I would consider a problem while trying to avoid being heard by your subjects, it’s no louder than a shutter going off.

Image quality is undeinably not as tack sharp as my best Nikon glass, but is still pretty darn impressive considering the price point and zoom range it offers. The slower aperture range though does mean it’s not great for low light work as it has a harder time keeping focus of moving subjects, and unless you’ve got a camera that can cope with high ISOs you’ll lose shutter speeds. However, providing you understand and work within the limitations, if you’re a way off being able to justify and afford professional grade Nikon glass, you really can’t go far wrong with this lens, it has become my ‘go to’ lens for all nearly all of my wildlife photography and will continue to be until that imaginary day in the future when I win the lottery and can afford the hallowed Nikon 200-400mm