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

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While I don’t always trust MTF charts from Nikon (since they are only theoretical), this one is pretty dead on with my lab assessments (see my Imatest results further down below). Colors on the building were preserved the best on the 70-200mm f/4G VR, but I still like the way the 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II handled the bright sun in the corner, with less noticeable and better-looking ghosting. Distortion All the lenses above are Nikon Z mirrorless only, meaning they will not fit on any Nikon DSLR regardless of the adapter you use. At the moment, these are the only cameras which work with Nikon Z lenses: At 70mm, the Nikon 70-200mm f/4G VR yields better contrast from center to corners than the 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II, which is very impressive. The Nikon 70-200mm f/4G seems to start off a tad worse in the center sharpness-wise, but yields better corner performance wide open (again, my lab tests confirm this). Now let’s see what happens at 200mm:

Hands-on with the AF-S Nikkor 70-200mm f/4G ED VR

Per Nikon, this lens delivers excellent contrast across the full frame (solid red line). Sharpness starts out very good at 70mm and improves even more towards 200mm (solid blue line). There is a little bit of field curvature on the wide end, but it is off the center, so it should not be noticeable. Center, mid-frame and corner performance should all be excellent, especially at 200mm. Minimum focus is 3.28 feet (1m), and the maximum reproduction ratio is 1:3.6. This lens doesn’t have the extreme focal length breathing of its bigger sibling. Focusing is internal, as already noted. Weighing only 850g, this lens is relatively lightweight and compact, especially when compared to Nikon's f/2.8 70-200mm lens, which weighs almost twice as much. The lens barrel is constructed form high quality plastics and the lens mount is metal, with a rubber gasket to help prevent the ingress of dust and moisture into the camera. Unfortunately the lens itself is not weather sealed though. The lens balances well on the Nikon D700 used for testing and should feel right at home on even Nikon's more compact entry level bodies due to the light weight. 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 better subject isolation and smoother bokeh (if the camera to subject distance remains constant). 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… To Denis of Whidbey Island : the way you introduce the discussion is interesting but I must say the logic is uncomplete.

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Corner shading is not evident when the lens is mounted on a sub-frame camera such as the D7000. On the full-frame D800e, it was a bit more prominent, but not enough to really be worried about. At its worst result, (105+mm, ƒ/4) the extreme corners of an image were just over a half-stop darker than the center of the image. Move the aperture down by just one stop, and there is no corner shading of note. 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: 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. 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, again because of difference in focal lengths. 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. Again, this shows that the 70-200mm f/4G would be much better suited for close-up work than the 70-200mm f/2.8.

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

The new roadmap doesn’t list any date projections for when the unannounced 35mm Z lens will go on sale, and anyone who tells you more than that is just making things up or repeating rumors. It also isn’t clear if the roadmap represents everything that Nikon will announce in 2023. Considering that there are still a few more months left in the year, there’s a decent chance we’ll see more than just one lens. 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. Lastly at 200mm, we see superb center performance wide open, but at the cost of corner performance. Stopped down however, the lens reaches superb performance across the frame. Nikon 70-200mm f/4G VR seems to render bokeh highlights the worst in this group. The outer edges look OK with some visible fringing, but the inner part of the circle certainly does suffer from the dirtier look. If we look at the less visible highlights, I cannot see that much difference though.

Nikon has a long history of making professional 70-80 to 200mm focal length zoom lenses, but aside from the very old 70-210 f/4 AI-S and AF lenses, it has never had an affordable and lightweight constant aperture f/4 model in its line. With its arch-rival Canon making a 70-200mm f/4L lens since 1999, and the high cost of the 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II model, Nikon was often criticized for not providing an f/4 alternative. After many years of delays, Nikon finally announced a lightweight alternative to the f/2.8 version in October of 2012 – the AF-S Nikkor 70-200mm f/4G ED VR, which is designed to work on both full-frame (FX) and cropped-factor sensor (DX) DSLR cameras. 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). With the introduction of the 70-200mm f/4G VR, Nikon completed two sets of lenses for professional and enthusiast/budget use. The high-end professional “trinity” is comprised of Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8G, 24-70mm f/2.8G and 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II, while the enthusiast/budget set contains Nikon 16-35mm f/4G VR, 24-120mm f/4G VR and the new 70-200mm f/4G VR – all stabilized constant aperture lenses, albeit with a little overlap. In this review, I will not only go over the features, specifications and performance of the Nikon 70-200mm f/4G VR lens, but will also compare it side by side with its bigger brother, as well as other third-party lenses like Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 EX DG APO OS HSM and Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 Di LD (IF) Macro. Unfortunately, I was not able to obtain the latest Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 SP Di VC USD lens for comparison, because the Nikon mount version was not available yet. If you don't want or need VR, this lens remains a popular choice. It's about as sharp as the new Nikon at ƒ/4, and has its own problems at 200mm. It even has a dedicated macro mode, though magnification at this setting is only 0.17x (which is bested by the new 70-200mm ƒ/4 with 0.24x).

Nikon AF-S Nikkor 70-200mm f/4G ED VR Lens Review Nikon AF-S Nikkor 70-200mm f/4G ED VR Lens Review

Measuring 78x179mm and weighing 850g, this is a travel-friendly lens that’s easy to stow and carry, and is comfortable for prolonged periods of handheld shooting. It’s also light enough to not require a tripod mounting ring for shooting with a tripod or monopod, although Nikon offers one as an optional extra. The lens is also compatible with Nikon’s 1.4x, 1.7x and 2.0x teleconverters although, with the last of these, the widest available aperture narrows to f/8.Let’s take a look at how the lens compares to the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II, Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 and Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 Macro that I used in this comparison: Feature In general the impression of build quality is that of an upmarket albeit not pro-level lens: A high quality plastic construction combined with a weather sealed metal lens-mount, and nine rounded aperture blades. I also shot a Taekwondo tournament with the Nikon 70-200mm f/4G VR and it handled extremely fast athletes really well at the largest aperture. Here is an example, shot at 70mm, f/4, ISO 800: What does this all mean? It means shoot the lens at f/4 with confidence at any focal length and only stop down if you need to increase depth of field. The Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm f/4G ED VR is Nikon’s newest addition to the popular range of 70-200mm zooms. But this time it is not a replacement for an older lens but an alternative to the top of the range AF-S 70-200/2.8G ED VR.