I have been reading a lot about the poor image quality, mostly soft edges and exposure fall off, of this combo the D3 with the 70-200 2.8
I need to buy this focal range and I need a fast lens, focus needs to be fast as well. Any one have experience with the Nikon lens, good or bad? Can anyone tell me of a good alternate lens! I need this lens before the Canadian Grand Prix in early June.
Why not pick up a D300 to use with the 70-200? I've shot very little sports, but from what little I have, I've found 200mm to be too short. The D300's pixel density and 1.5 crop will give you a little more range at 200mm and should not give you the problems that are reported on the D3.
The review on DPR is no so good on FF. Phil says the lens is designed for a crop camera.
Sofar I don't have any problems with it. AF is lightning fast.
A lot of people think this lens will be upgraded soon (Photokina). Perhaps you rent one first.
The 70-200 will be fine until the new one comes out then it will be junk (except for the plentiful DX cameras so you should be able to sell it close to what you paid for it). The question is what will the new one cost?
I have the D3 and 70-200. The soft corners matter much more if you are shooting landscape photos and want edge-to-edge sharpness - not sure if that matters if you are shooting sports where often the edges don't need to be super sharp (the 70-200 is still super sharp in the center). I haven't used my 70-200 for serious landscapes yet so I never noticed the softness issue until I read about it on the Internet. I also haven't had a big issue with vignetting since where it is noticeable I can adjust it in postprocessing, and the new updated firmware has a vignetting adjustment. For me, the only alternate will be the new 70-200VR whenever it will be released, but that's just me.
I do not own a D3 and I do not own a 70-200 VR. Like many of you I have seen the reports on the combo by DP Review and Bjorn Rorslett.
If the D3 is the camera you want to buy I would not go with the 70-200 for obvious reasons. the 80-200 AF-D and the 80-200 AF-S were designed for full frame and surely will do a better job with the D3.
Now, if you have no objection to a D300,,,,
William Rodriguez
Miami, Florida.
I use the 70-200vr for sports on a day to day basis on a D3. As peter said the corner softness is there but not generally an issue for sports. The vignetting is there too in FX mode but mostly I have not found it to be a serious problem. I also use the 80-200AF-ED and it is fine in FX mode
the issues with the 70-200VR shouldn't be exaggerated:
I have shot several assignments with that combo and I was nervous because of the vignetting and softness issues, but in practice I only had to PP a few pics. 99% of the pics were ok:
- for portraiture, not relevant and because of the reduced DOF, I use the 70-200VR @f3.5-5.6 anyway
- for sports (mainly indoor): irrelevant (I also usually shoot slightly closed down, f2.8-f4)
- landscape: I typically shoot @f5.6-f11 - irrelevant
I have printed landscape shots on A3, and before I read that the corners were soft, I didn't notice anything, and nobody ever reacted looking at my printouts "hey, look at those corners, they are soft".
As a conclusion, I am not very happy with Nikon's design because it is not really acceptable that an expensive pro lens exhibits such problems but in practice this is a lot of BS, because most applications won't really suffer from it (if you have an application where it is relevant, you can go for another 80-200/70-200 lens).
Wow thanks everyone for your comments and suggestions. I love my D3 and as much as I agree the D300 is a better fit for the 70-200, I do not have the cash for it at the moment. I have the 70-200 on order, but I can still stop the order.
I used to own the 80-200, the one with the collar. It was okay just slow focusing. I don't think I want to go that route.
I must say that for a major company like Nikon to not support the new FX sensor with newer glass is beyond me. I think they rushed the D3 out and didn't keep up with the need for newer Tele lenses for it. How old is the 80-400? I will say that I love my 14-24, it's the sharpest wide angle that I have ever owned!
i see unacceptable softness in the corners in every shot in that f-stop range across all focal lengths. it is symmetric in the corners, so i know my lens isn't out of alignment. i'll use other lenses where possible and deal with the vignetting in post. it's the only lens that i need to do vignetting correction in post. i noticed the soft corners less than a month after i got the D3 but did more shooting to see how bad it was. for the price of the lens, it is completely unacceptable.
Herb...
gugs wrote:
- landscape: I typically shoot @f5.6-f11 - irrelevant
I have printed landscape shots on A3, and before I read that the corners were soft, I didn't notice anything, and nobody ever reacted looking at my printouts "hey, look at those corners, they are soft".
It seems that under controlled conditions (tripod/landscapes?) there are better lenses than the 70-200-Primes! But the 70-200 is most usefull lends itself durig uncontrolled conditions where the BG is OOF by the corners while moving people (animals) are in focus in the center.
So I would rather have the 70-200 VR and the IQ that comes with it rather than miss VR.
But then I have a real back up (my Mk III with the FF Canon 70-200 F2.8 IS). So all in all I consider the Nikkor a more "Romantic" lens-a favorite of mine.
Interestingly, Michael Reichmann's (Luminous-Landscape) featured photo is from a D3, 70-200 2.8 @ 400 ISO. The shot looks good from corner to corner. Not used to seeing shots from Nikon on his site. http://www.luminous-landscape.com/
the far corners are the problem. he may have cropped. also, Capture automatically corrects the vignetting on the 70-200. if he used something else, then it can be done in post. the corner sharpness is my issue since i make prints minimum 11x14 and most usually 12x18.
Herb....
James R wrote:
Interestingly, Michael Reichmann's (Luminous-Landscape) featured photo is from a D3, 70-200 2.8 @ 400 ISO. The shot looks good from corner to corner. Not used to seeing shots from Nikon on his site. http://www.luminous-landscape.com/
