Nikkor 200-400 f4 VR2 Review

Fresh off the docks, Nikon's new long lens, the Nikkor 200-400 F4 has arrived on our shores. And I was lucky enough to have been given the chance to use it and review it, so here goes..

First impression:

When a lens comes with its own neck strap, that can only mean one thing.. it is HEAVY! I didn't waste any time weighing it (I was more excited to use it than weigh it) but yeah, it is heavy. It comes with its own bag too, almost the size of a devent knapsack. And if you attach the lens hood to it.. it appears to be even longer.

I am not the type who would post a review based on technical jargon, a lot of numbers and stuff. I try to veer away from marketing hype so my style.. I use it.. I test it.. I look at the pictures I took and I write about it.

I used it on my D90 for bird photography, because that is my specialty, bird photography. And on the onset, this lens should perform well for this purpose, because it is a 400. I didn't bother to test it at 200mm as I was already sure that if I did own one, I would be using it at 400 99.99% of the time. I will leave those tests to other photographers as I will only test it in my field, which is bird photography. Oh, have I mentioned I will use it for bird photography?

Second impression:

Things I were expecting to test.
1. DOF. DOF on an F4 will surely be paper thin specially if the subject is near. I will try to test that.
2. AF Speed. Compared to my 80-400 who is "notorious" for being a slow AF lens (although I disagree), this lens should focus faster. If it doesn't, I will go home in tears.
3. Image Quality and sharpness should be top notch. My plan, take a picture of a small bird, from afar, then crop till I can't crop no more.. and if you cry out.. Im gonna crop it some more.. :)

Only three basic tests, should be easy enough yes? Try doing it in the field. Here goes nothing!

1. DOF or depth of filed. By definition the depth of field is the area in the frame that is sharp. And I am expecting it to be reeeeally thin at f4.

Luckily enough I spotted a Black Crowned Night Heron perched and producing bird poop. :) This should give me some time.

Here is the full frame capture at 400mm


This is a full framer with no crop!
Normally I would focus on the eyes but here I intentionally focused on the shoulder to demonstrate DOF.

See how sharp that thin are is between the neck and shoulders?


A little crop

Notice how the sharpness is in the focal area and the eye, head, beak and lower body is already outside of the DOF. WOW!

2. AF Speed. AF speed is ok as expected. Not blisteringly fast of course but decent enough to track a flying subject:



3. IQ and sharpness. This should be the hardest challenge. Finding a small bird from a good distance and taking a picture of it. Lady luck was on my side as I saw a Lowland White-eye foraging in a far tree.

Original pic

The bird is there I swear! It is right smack in the middle, almost small enough to fit in the focusing box that you see when you look through the viewfinder.

Here she is at over 100% crop

See! I told you there was a bird there! There is also a decent amount of details (you can see the whites of its eyes!)

one more sample photo, this time of a Yello-vented Bulbul


OOPS! Almost forgot to mention about VR2, which is the new feature of this lens. The older model of the 200-400 has.. duh.. VR1?

Needless to say, the VR on this model is better that its predecessor. How much better? All these photos here were taken handheld. I think my left arm is a bit more muscular now than my right arm :)

Negative points? Unfortunately there are some
Like most lenses, the sweet spot for this baby is found three stops down. At f5.6, the images are incredibly sharp, no aberration of vignetting and sharpness is spread out evenly up to the corners unless outside of the DOF.

What really ticks me off is that I saw what I think is either blooming of Chromatic Aberration at f4 :(

First photo was taken at f8, second photo at f4. (Big thanks to the bird staying still long enough for this test)

All in all, this lens performed great for me, a bit on the heavy side but I think it also helped stabilize my handheld shots. Image quality is expectedly above par but still not that eye-popping ground shaking quality that I am looking for.

The devil is in the details: (I'm just nitpicking here)

I liked the internal focus mechanism. This allows me to wrap the lens with lenscoat or camouflage cloth easy.

What I didn't like though at first, is the placement of the focus ring. When I handhold the lens, my hands end up disturbing the focus! Its a good thing it has the AF/M setting where the lens will auto focus, you can intervene manually but AF is priority. I think this AF/M feature is called Autofocus with Manual Override and AF Priority. :p

The neck strap is connected to the tripod collar, logically. I just didn't like it that when I rotate the tripod collar 90degrees, to mount it on a sidekick type of tripod head, the strap will then be placed in a quite awkward position.

As for the weight, I am confused as to why the lens, even when attached to a D90 does not stand on its tripod collar. It is a bit heavy on the front element side and keeps bowing down. Does this mean I should use the heavier D3 to balance it? :)

For now, the verdict is that this lens is a winner. Out of ten stars, I give it an eight.