To compare sharpness at a short-telephoto focal length of 85mm, we shot this scene with the Nikkor DX 16-85mm VR, DX 18-105mm VR and DX 18-200mm VR II, using a Nikon D90 body at all apertures. The D90 was set to RAW to avoid in-camera JPEG corrections; all files were processed in Nikon's Capture NX 2.2.3 with lens corrections disabled and the default sharpness of 3. VR was disabled on each lens, and magnified assistance in Live View used to confirm the focusing.

That said, the DX 18-200mm VR II doesn't perform too badly here: it manages to avoid any fringing and is only a little soft in the corners, but it can't help but look inferior next to those great results from the DX 18-105mm VR.

In the meantime, the DX 16-85mm VR suffers from a similar degree of corner softness to the super-zoom at this point, but manages to look noticeably worse thanks to coloured fringing. Remove the latter with correction in-camera or using software later and it looks much better.

Scroll down to the results from the centre and we see a similar story to the previous focal length: as such the three lenses look fairly similar at first glance, but look closely and you'll notice slightly superior definition from the DX 18-105mm VR compared to the DX 18-200mm VR II and fractionally more still from the DX 16-85mm VR.

Now scroll down beyond the two results tables to see whether the DX 55-200mm VR can redeem itself at this slightly longer focal length, or if you're not interested in this lens, head straight over to our Nikkor DX 18-200mm VR II 135mm results.

Support this site by shopping below

To compare sharpness at a short-telephoto focal length of 85mm, we shot this scene with the Nikkor DX 55-200mm VR, DX 18-105mm VR and DX 18-200mm VR II, using a Nikon D90 body at all apertures. The D90 was set to RAW to avoid in-camera JPEG corrections; all files were processed in Nikon's Capture NX 2.2.3 with lens corrections disabled and the default sharpness of 3. VR was disabled on each lens, and magnified assistance in Live View used to confirm the focusing.

The first table compares crops taken from the corner of each image at different aperture settings and the second table compares crops taken from the centres of the same images.

Now let's see how both the telephoto zoom and super-zoom compare when zoomed-in further in our Nikkor DX 18-200mm VR II 135mm results.