Camera Labs

After days and days of testing I'm finally coming to a close.
I know there are some tests not yet completed: AF-reliability and VR-efficiency. But there are many reports claiming superior VR and reliable AF so I'm sure this lens will satisfy its owner also in these respects.

My conclusion:
The pluses: It has superior optics, very useful image-stabilization and is a joy to handle.
The minuses: image quality with tele-converters, build-in flash casts a shadow of the lens-hood between 70 and 105mm, price

To sum it up: This is the finest tele-zoom I ever tested and it will feature prominently on my camera. Highly recommended!

And here's a parting shot which you can scrutinize in full-resolution detail if you wish...

Locked:

Standard-settings, no post-processing apart from a little cropping.

As an added bonus I have two shots to show the out-of-focus rendering of highlights with this lens at 200mm. The first image shot at f/2.8 and presented in full resolution (click through), the second at f/16 presented as two 100% crops mounted together.

f/2.8 full resolution:


f/16 100% crops:


While the rendering at f/16 shows some nasty "triple-doughnuts" the rendering at f/2.8 looks very pleasing with almost no outlining and nice round shapes. This is a clear indicator of pleasing and creamy bokeh at large apertures.

I have an additional full-resolution shot in stark contra-light for you to have a look at the performance of the lens under adverse conditions. Shot at f/8, so any ghosts should be clearly visible. Pretty impressive methinks!

The jogger:

Here are two examples of the color-rendition of this lens under absolutely drab lighting. The sky was totally overcast and the clouds almost touched the place where I was shooting just half an hour after sunrise. Shot at -1 EV, developed at standard settings, no post-processing other than cropping and another -0.4 EV on the first image.

Two:

195mm, f/2.8, ISO 400, 1/30 sec, hand-held

Bench:

175mm, f/4.0, ISO 200, 1/60 sec, hand-held

You can click through to the large originals.

Coming back to the performance with close-up filter:
Did some more in depth testing with the Canon 500D. And although the test-target is not optimal for 1:2.4 magnification you can still see what's going on.
After testing at 200mm from f/2.8-f/11 I found that flatness of field was quite amazing but at f/2.8 I never got satisfying sharpness - even in the center. Only after stopping down to f/8 were the results "good enough".
The surprise came, when I reverse-mounted the close-up lens (a suggestion by Bjørn Rørslett)!
It was immediately clear from the f/2.8 live-view image that this was the sharper solution. The center-sharpness at f/2.8-reverse was as sharp as f/8-normal

See this 100% crop of the center shot at 200mm f/2.8 plus Canon 500D mounted in reverse orientation (left) and normally (right):

All focusing was done manually with Camera Control pro in live-view. Contrast based AF would have chosen a slightly more contrasty focus-position in normal mount but sharpness was reduced then.

But if you look at the corners field-curvature clearly showed now.

See this 100% cop of the DX-corner at 200mm f/2.8 plus Canon 500D mounted in reverse orientation (left) and normally (right):

The corners look better with the close-up lens normally mounted.

Stoping down you could still see differences between normal and reverse mount even at f/8.0 and only at f/16 both images were indiscernible. But that is on a DX-body. Not sure how the corners would look on a D3x.

So if you're shooting stamps you should use the Canon 500D in normal orientation and stop down to f/8.0 at least. But when shooting three-dimensional objects you should reverse-mount the 500D which gives you amazingly sharp shots even at f/2.8.

Want to get a feeling how big this lens is on a D300 body?
Here it is, compared to the Nikon 18-200/3.5-5.6 VR (below, at 200mm) and the Sigma 150/2.8 macro (above).


All lenses with their respective lens-hood attached.

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This thread is locked. Please post your comments and questions here.
Dieser Thread ist verriegelt. Aber wenn es irgendwelche Fragen, Kommentare und Anregungen zu meinem Review gibt, hier gibt's die Möglichkeit auch für unsere deutschsprachigen Forums-Besucher!
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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D300+assorted lenses

I've just added some images from the Nuremberg zoo captured yesterday. They are all RAW-converted in Lightroom 3.5 with CA-removal ON (but geometry correction and anti-vignetting OFF) to the in-camera "vivid"-processings. This gives a slight increase of saturation, contrast and sharpening over the standard settings.
The images are mostly cropped but uploaded in full resolution so you can pixel-peep to your heart's content!
The lens was hand-held all the time with VRII set to ON in "normal" mode. Most of the shots were taken at the long end (I could have used a 300mm lens on the DX-body quite often) and some of the shots were taken at or below 1/125 sec.
The collection is here. Just ignore the fish: It was captured with the AF-S 35/1.4G.

One prime example of the capabilities of this lens is shown here:

Prairie Dog 31870 by Thomas, on Flickr
Shot at 200mm, f/2.8, 1/2000 sec, ISO 200

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This thread is locked. Please post your comments and questions here.
Dieser Thread ist verriegelt. Aber wenn es irgendwelche Fragen, Kommentare und Anregungen zu meinem Review gibt, hier gibt's die Möglichkeit auch für unsere deutschsprachigen Forums-Besucher!

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses