Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G VR Lens

£114.995
FREE Shipping

Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G VR Lens

Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G VR Lens

RRP: £229.99
Price: £114.995
£114.995 FREE Shipping

In stock

We accept the following payment methods

Description

The filter thread stayed the same at 77mm, which is great news for those who already own 77mm filters, or want to move up to this lens from the “D” version. The lens mount features a rubber gasket to minimize dust and debris from making it into the camera chamber. The single ring on the lens is made out of plastic and has a rubber layer on top of it for a better grip. The ring has the same smooth feel as on other modern AF-S lenses, allowing one to move past infinity or closest focus point with slightly more resistance. There are three switches on the side of the lens. The first switch is used for moving between Auto / Manual (A/M), Manual / Auto (M/A) and Manual (M) focusing operation. I really like the versatility of this lens – being able to shoot at 55mm all the way to 300mm is very nice, especially for wildlife photography. Unlike the new Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G VR or the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR II, this lens is not plagued with a “lens breathing” issue and 300mm on the long side is truly like 300mm, not shorter. Another important thing to note, is that the lens does extend pretty far when zoomed all the way in to 300mm. This is quite normal for this type of a lens and most other consumer zoom lenses also extend out when zoomed in. Zooming in/out was a little jerky and not very smooth on my lens sample, but it probably does get better overtime. The lens does not creep at all and I don’t think it will, even with heavy use in the future. The HB-57 lens hood is specifically engineered for this lens and it snaps on easily – I would leave it mounted on the lens to keep the front element protected against damage and flare/ghosting. NIKON D300 + 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 55mm, ISO 400, 1/250, f/8.0

Nikon 300mm f/4E PF ED VR Review - Photography Life Nikon 300mm f/4E PF ED VR Review - Photography Life

Diffraction limiting sets in at at ƒ/16; fully stopped-down performance is acceptable at wider focal lengths, but at 135mm and longer, it becomes quite soft; at 300mm and ƒ/29, we note around 6 blur units across the frame.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. Apochromatic lenses have special lens elements (aspheric, extra-low dispersion etc) to minimize the problem, hence they usually cost more. Again, the sharpness is pretty good overall, but we are already seeing some loss of sharpness at the largest aperture and f/5.6. Stopping down the lens to f/8.0 and f/11.0 produces the best results. Sharpness Test – Nikon 55-300mm @ 105mm Corner Frame I have personally been a huge fan of the 300mm f/4D AF-S lens and have owned it for many years, loving the lens for its superb optical performance, fast autofocus, light weight, and compact size, making it my ultimate travel lens for wildlife photography – a perfect companion for hand-held shooting. Because it was so good with the 1.4x teleconverter, I practically always kept the teleconverter attached to the lens, making it a very nice 420mm f/5.6 combination. When Nikon finally announced the new 300mm f/4E VR lens, I got very excited, because Nikon completely redesigned the lens. In fact, with close to a 50% reduction in weight and a 30% reduction in physical size, we are not dealing with another redesign or update – this is a completely different lens.

Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED Vibration Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED Vibration

When focusing in low-light, you might notice the lens hunting, which is certainly annoying. Obviously, the 55-300 is not a good candidate for any kind of indoor/low-light photography, unless flashes are used. Lens Sharpness and Contrast Overall, the lens sharpness performance is pretty good, with a slightly worse performance at larger apertures when shooting at long ranges above 105mm. The remedy is to stop down to f/8.0, which increases image sharpness. The Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED VR II lens mounted on a Nikon D3300 body, extended to 55mm At the 55mm end of the zoom range, the angle of view is 28° 50', which is a little bit tighter than that of an 80mm lens on a 35mm body. I have now taken many more pictures with this lens on my D7100, specifically looking for difficult subjects and conditions. In most cases, it has been pretty good to about 200 or 210mm, with or without a Kenko 1.4x TC, in or out of crop mode. So up to roughly 400mm DX net it's fine for "normal" subjects.Handling-wise, the lens is simply amazing. When I first mounted the lens on my Nikon D750, I could not believe how light it was when compared to my 300mm f/4D – it did not feel at all like a 300mm lens, more like a 70-300mm VR zoom in terms of size and weight. The lens was so light and easy to hand-hold, that I never bothered to put it on a tripod. I even let it hang off the mount on my Nikon D750 when hiking, which is something I certainly do not feel comfortable doing with my 300mm f/4D. In this regard, the 300mm f/4E VR is a game-changer, as it handles a world better than any other lens in its class. Wide open, both lenses have an almost identical corner performance – I cannot see any difference between the two. The same is true when stopped down to f/8.0: Thanks to the use of ED low dispersion glass in the the design, the 55-300mm doesn't suffer much with the dreaded effects of chromatic aberrations. Throughout the zoom range colour fringing barely exceeds 0.5 pixel widths and should not pose too many problems in normal shooting conditions.

Nikon 18-300mm VR Review - Photography Life Nikon 18-300mm VR Review - Photography Life

The VR too is a must have, as per me. This really reduces the use of a tripod plus other advantages, shell out a bit more for the VR variant, if given a choice. My 2.0x Kenko TC works on both cameras, but it doesn't autofocus, and holding steady enough to get really sharp images at these very long net focal lengths is difficult. I don't use a tripod, but that might help here. As usual with that particular TC, there is definite image degradation over the sharp 1.4x TC Corners look all the same to me in terms of sharpness, with a slight amount of visible purple fringing in the corners. A large rubberised zoom ring fills just under half of the outside of the lens, giving plenty of space for a comfortable zoom action. Unfortunately the lens does not focus internally, extending by a couple of centimetres at close distances. The focus ring also rotates during autofocus, and although it is recessed I caught my fingers on it a couple of times during use, so care needs to be taken to ensure fingers aren't snagged during focusing. As expected, the extreme corners at the largest apertures do show some softness at 55mm. Stopping down the lens to f/8.0 does improve the situation considerably though. Sharpness Test – Nikon 55-300mm @ 70mm Center Frame

In terms of features, the Nikon AF-S Nikkor DX 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED VR is a bit of a mixed bag. One one hand, it has Vibration Reduction on board – hence the VR abbreviation in the product name –; on the other, it isn't as sophisticated as on some other Nikon lenses. There's an on-off switch on the lens barrel, but there's no choice between active and normal modes. Likewise, the lens has a built-in auto-focus motor that allows AF operation on every Nikon DX camera body, including entry-level offerings like the D3100 or D5100, but – unlike with most other AF-S lenses – focusing is not internal, and manual focusing is not possible when the focus mode selector is set to the 'A' position, as shown above. The lens has no distance scale and no focus limiter, either. The lens has two control features: a switch to enable or disable autofocus, and a switch to enable or disable vibration reduction. The lens does not feature a distance scale, depth-of-field indicators or infrared index. The lens takes 58mm filters: as mentioned, these will rotate during focusing.

Nikon 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G VR Review - Focusing and VR Nikon 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G VR Review - Focusing and VR

As you can see, the lens performs very well at all apertures when shooting at 55mm. The image wide open @ f/4.5 is just a tad softer than others, but almost unnoticeable, which is very good. Sharpness Test – Nikon 55-300mm @ 55mm Corner Frame The zoom is smooth and image quality is as good as the venerable 70-300 VR lens, perhaps a bit better to my eyes (especially at 300mm). Switching between automatic and manual focusing, and activation of the vibration reduction (VR) system are both carried out using a pair of sliders at the rear of the lens on the left-hand side (seen from behind the camera). Unusually for a Nikon lens, the AF speed proved to be a little sluggish when compared with that of the other lenses in this group test. As you can see, the vignetting is clearly gone by f/8.0. The same thing happens when shooting at the longest focal length of 300mm. Ghosting and Flare

Distortion is also well controlled, at least at 55mm anyway. At 55mm Imatest could only detect 0.29% barrels distortion, whereas at 300mm 1.3% pincushion distortion has replaced the barrelling, which may become noticeable when straight lines are paramount. Fortunately the distortion pattern is uniform at both ends, making it simple to correct in image editing software afterwards. At f/8.0, the performance is almost identical. Nikon 55-300mm vs Nikon 55-200mm @ 105mm Corner Frame With the Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED VR II lens set to its maximum aperture at 55mm, there is a bit of light fall-off in the extreme corners, but it won't really affect your real-world shots. The Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED VR II lens has a lot of plastic parts, unfortunately including the lens mount. The lens is not claimed to be weatherproof but there is a rubber seal around the lens mount that should provide basic dust protection. The corners are very similar to 105mm – consistently good images from f/5.6 to f/11.0. Sharpness Test – Nikon 55-300mm @ 300mm Center Frame



  • Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
  • EAN: 764486781913
  • Sold by: Fruugo

Delivery & Returns

Fruugo

Address: UK
All products: Visit Fruugo Shop