ebrandon
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Upload & Sell: Off
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I just got a 28-300mm VRII the other day, and I know people are looking for samples from this lens since it's gotten "this is a surprisingly good lens" reviews, and "this is garbage, I returned it immediately" reviews.
I suspect those differences are due to samples variation, but the one I received from Amazon puts me squarely in the "this is a surprisingly good lens" camp.
To give you some perspective as to where I'm coming from, I shoot with a Nikon D3, a Canon 5D2, and lots of micro four thirds cameras, mostly using the highest quality primes from Nikon, Canon, Olympus (current and OM), Zeiss (ZF and Contax), and Voigtlander. I also shoot with very high quality zooms, like the Nikon 14-24, 24-70, 70-200 VR II, the Canon 70-200 f4 IS, and great classic zooms like the Contax Zeiss 35-70mm f3.4.
I only shoot RAW, I pixel peep, and my wife & I become familiar with the quality of the files we get from various cameras and lenses because no picture goes out the door with passing through Lightroom 3 and/or Photoshop 5 trying to extract the best final image we can.
I got the 28-300mm on a bit of a whim, the main idea being that when I'm out taking pictures with a couple of amazing primes, I'd have this in my bag too so that if there's a shot I must get at a different focal length, I'd be able to get it, albeit not at the highest quality.
So these test shots were taken to know whether or not I could "trust" the lens to get a decent results, and whether to keep it or return it.
My top line observations from using the lens and examining the pictures from it are:
* This is a pretty good lens -- yielding acceptable images wide open and good images at f8 or f11 on my D3
* It's surprisingly contrasty with decent color rendition
* CA is very well controlled
* The VR II works much better than I expected, with images in the viewfinder stabilizing amazingly well
* The close-up abilities of the lens are very surprising in the field, you can get right up to stuff and it's no issue at all
* The bokeh is surprisingly nice
* It's pleasing to use, focusing smartly and accurately the first time, and with a nice stiff, but not too stiff, zoom ring
The main drawback, is that when I first looked at the RAW images (with 0 sharpening) they looked quite soft. But they "take sharpening" very well, and with about 40 points of sharpening in LR3, they look a lot like pictures taken with my better lenses and 20 points of sharpening.
I've decided to keep the lens and sell my 70-300 VR. The 70-300 VR is quite a nice lens too, but entirely redundant with this one for me.
Edited on Oct 16, 2010 at 05:47 PM · View previous versions
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