The 28-300 VR loses all of the wide-angle range compared to the 18-300 VR.
Of these three zooms, only the 28-300 VR works on FX. When I spend more time looking at the master files for thee shots on my dual 30" monitors, I realize that as plastic zoom lenses, there is often more variation from shot-to-shot with each lens than any consistent and absolute variation from one lens to another.Īll these zooms are made using the same technology, and pretty much make the same pictures. Don't become one of them, get out and shoot! People who spend a lot of time worrying about lens sharpness rarely spend time worrying about what makes a good photo, so they rarely do. Nikon makes no 28-450mm zoom for FX, which would have been the analog to the 18-300mm DX lens.Īll these lenses can make knockout photos 5-feet (1.5 meters) wide, seen at the same distance as your computer screen. They cover different ranges and are different sizes and cover different formats. At normal shooting apertures in the center, they are all about as sharp as each other and the reference lenses at most focal lengths. These all do about the same thing optically. At infinity, all give their rated maximum focal lengths. Optical tricks that shorten the effective maximum focal length at close distances in exchange for being able to focus so close. Instant manual-focus override with a fingertip. At 200mm, my NIKKOR-Q 200mm f/4 from 1970 is sharper than any of the super zooms or 70-300 VR, and sells for only about $75! If you want something significantly better at the long end, look at the 80-200mm and 70-200 VR II lenses instead, or even Nikon's fixed lenses. Compared for sharpness, they are about the same at 105mm, the 70-300 is a little better at 200mm, and the 18-300 is a little better at 300mm. The 70-300 VR is a different lens for a different purpose.
Don't sweat it.Ĭropping from the 18-200mm isn't as good as either other lens at 300mm. Other shot pairs made one or the other look a little better. These are too close to call betwen the 18-300 and 28-300. The 18-300 VR and 28-300 VR look crappy by comparison. Ignore the exposure variations.Īt 200mm, the 200mm Micro wins, followed closely by the 18-200. Ignore the exposure variations.Īt 85mm, the 85/1.4G wins by a slight margin, with all the zooms about the same.
When reviewing numerous pairs, there were more variations in each lens from shot-to-shot than there was from lens to lens.Īt 35mm, they're all the same. You may click any image to get to that lens' detailed review.Īt 18mm, they're the same. I didn't include the 70-300 VR as it's not a super zoom, but I do compare it at the end. Its images are 4,928 x 3,264 pixels, and here I'm only showing 500 x 500 pixel crops.įor the sake of my own sanity, I only am comparing the centers, and only at f/7.1 at 18mm and 35mm, f/5 at 85mm, and f/5.6 at 200mm and 300mm. These are crops taken from the center of a 16 MP DX Nikon D7000 at 100%. At smaller sizes, these differences will be even less obvious. Few people, if anyone, prints this big from DX. On most computer monitors at 100 DPI, these are small sections from what would be gallery-sized 50" x 33 " (4 x 2.8 feet, or 1.5 x 1 meters) prints, if printed in their entirety. Nikon's only other super-zoom was the manual-focus 35-200mm AI-s of 1985-2005, which wasn't very good optically, so I won't bother comparing it here. Only the 28-300 VR is able to cover FX or 35mm, while all these lenses cover DX. Let's compare the sharpness of Nikon's recent super-zooms: the 18-200 DX VR, 28-300 VR and the newest Nikon 18-300 DX VR. Intro Images Comparison Table Recommendations
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