Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR DX Zoom-Nikkor Lens Reviews

Average Customer Rating - 4.5 out of 5 stars

351 customer reviews

Great as a "one-stop shop", but consider carefully, December 13, 2007
I have have this lens for ~2 months and use it on my D80. I also have a few other lenses, two primes and one wide-angle zoom.

Before purchasing this lens I would encourage anyone to scrabble online and read the technical reviews of it. I agree with their consensus which is:

- if you want a severely flexible zoom that gives you VR and a wide collection of focal lengths without too much substance or bulk, and if you don't want to be switching between lenses, then this is the lens for you. It's good plenty to cover most shots in a range of adjectives conditions. If you want the quality of SLR but only one lens later go for it.

- if you want great optical quality (ie low distortion etc), and/or wide open enough aperture to give low pallid ability/fast shutter speed, then the design compromises in this lens construct it a questionable choice for you.

In short, the designers have definitely preferenced this lens's amazing flexibility at the cost of other attributes found surrounded by higher quality (though smaller quantity versatile in some respects) photographic cup.

This design balance may suit you brilliantly or it may not suit you at all. It adjectives depends on what you are buying the lens for, and what sort of use you intend to have for your photographic equipment.

I'm happy beside mine as a flexible "one-stop-shop" tool, especially when I'm travelling light and don't exactly know what I'm going to come across. It does give pretty restrained images all told, and a fantastic "advanced point-and-shoot" know-how.

But does it spend much time on my camera when I have all my other gear on mitt and when I want to take a specific high-quality, technically thought out shot? No.

PS: a general-use alternative that a few people recommend is a 2-lens kit made up of the 18-55 and 55-200. Both come surrounded by VR these days and are inexpensive yet arguably better optical point. Bottom line is you get impossible to tell apart total focal length range and slightly better optics for about 2/3 of the cost of 18-200, next to the only downside being the obligation to switch between the lenses.

Not the "Perfect Lens", but close, June 10, 2006
I waited 6 weeks for mine to arrive and used it almost immediately at an airshow feature the Blue Angels. I took about 3 gigibytes of pictures at that show. I used the lens with a D50 surrounded by sports mode to capture the fast moving planes. It be a great day with not a cloud contained by the sky. When I later looked at the pictures I was dismayed to see significant pallid fall off or vignetting on the shots taken at 200mm near the lens wide open at f5.6.

This desk light fall off is the most significant problem I hold noticed with this lens. I contacted Nikon and they said it be normal. Since the lens is made for the smaller DX sensor the diameter of the lens is smaller. This causes power-driven shadowing at long zoom lengths with the lens at the all-embracing open settings of f5.6 until about f11. All lenses hold light fall bad, to some degree, at the edges. When you use a regular lens made for 35mm with the smaller digital DX sensors the spill out off is outside the sensor and not seen. The lantern fall off be especially noticable with the blue/uniform background. If the surroundings was "busy" the falloff would be less noticable.

Vignetting/light crash down off is also usually seen on the yawning side of zooms like this. I hold not seen any with this lens. I do use a Hoya Pro 1/2 solidity filter so that a shadow is not made when shooting wide angles of 18mm - 28mm or so. I saw a technical review of this lens that noted it have significant outer distortion on pictures taken at 18mm but I have not seen that.

Pros

-Light shipment for range
-Large range
-Vibration Reduction
-Sharp, crisp pictures near vibrant colors
-Fast Focus with manual focus adjustment ring for fine tuning

Cons

-Light crash off at long telephoto settings and large f stops
-Vibration Reduction help with handheld shots but does not stop subject motion in low frothy, you still need a fast lens for that
-High price and set availability
-Might get light leak off at wide angles unless expensive 1/2
girth filter is used
-Lens Creep (but most telephotos have this to some extent)

I have since used the lens to shoot the Special Olympics. The outside track and area photos are excellent. Inside shots where hit and miss with subject movement surrounded by low light being the biggest culprit (was shooting no flash at 1600 iso).

For roughly the same money you can get a Nikon or Sigma 2.8 lens that covers approx. 80-200mm. I hold read several opinions that you will still have a reduced amount of bad pictures with the VR of this lens and I believe specifically true. It is not a perfect lens, but it takes great pictures once you know its limitations.

One tip - If you win this lens, when you use it on a tripod turn VR off, it will actually make happen your photos to be blurry.

UPDATE-Fall 2008 I have stopped using this lens and am instead using the Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC LD Aspherical IF Macro Lens for Nikon DSLR Cameras which has "Vibration Control" and a wider gamut going all the way out to 270mm. It focuses almost as hasty and has a wider diameter hence the vignetting of the Nikon is gone. One last piece is that it has much less lens creep and even a lock at 18mm.

Good lens, but you may obligation an external flash unit, March 8, 2006
No question going on for it this is a great lens. But be aware that if you plan on using it with your built-in flash, at wide angle in that will be a dark spot on the bottom of your pictures because the flash is so close to the lens. This is not a problem for hot shoe mounted flash units such as the SB-800. So while this lens as recurrently is touted as a good "travel lens" you may still have to fetch a flash unit along. Not a big issue, but something potential buyers should be aware of.

Also, you may want to purchase thin lens filter (e.g. Hoya Pro series) to avoid vignetting of huge angle shots.

WONDERFUL lens... NOT a cure all, April 27, 2006
NOTE: I changed this review on May 15, somewhat to respond to some of the other comments.

Some of the reviews you've read on the internet are a little over-hyped. And some of them, or at smallest some portions of them, are not. I'm using this lens on a D50... Great results so far.

Well, you know the specs by now. two ED elements, three aspheric, Silent Wave Motor, VR II, Internal Focusing (NO movement of the front element!) and great zoom compass (beware, this thing gets obnoxiously huge when zoom in to 200. It just looks plain silly, especially next to the lens hood, which I left in the box anyway.)

I am not going to stir into detailed specifics of the distortion, since that's been dealt near better by Ken Rockwell, Thom Hogan and others (EXCELLENT reviews... seek them out...). But it's severe enough at the wide open end that you will probably want to correct it (as best you can) in Photoshop. In real-life shooting, it isn't a huge treaty. (UPDATE: In real life shooting of hundreds of descriptions so far, I've found NOT ONE SINGLE INSTANCE where I wanted to bother "fixing" it. I repeat... There is distortion, but it is NOT a problem.) I find that when I zoom within to 24 it is totally usable to all intents and purposes, and if I REALLY want to use something you shot at 18, unless there are some REALLY straight lines contained by it you might have no need of correction. So, surrounded by short, the distortion is there, but so what. It's bound to be in a lens of this extent.

Some other reviewers report better resistance to flare than I am experiencing. It is still pretty good in a lens of this oodles elements, but it is hardly "nonexistent" as some have reported. (UPDATE! I hold had only ONE picture "ruined" by flare. It was pointed at the sun. Flare is excellent on this lens!) Mine is made in Thailand and faster ones in Japan. I hope that I got one and the same quality as the lucky early adopters, but this could commentary for that difference. I still don't use the lens hood because I step the filter threads up to 77 and don't want to take off my UV filter ever time I use it.

I in truth find I can stack my polarizer on top of my UV (which is on a 72 - 77mm step-up ring - Curse you Nikon for not making the threads 77!) and STILL use this lens with no legitimate vignetting at 24 and above. Now I REALLY want a 12-24, but that's a whole other story (don't have the dough).

Focus is LUDICROUSLY nifty, either manually or auto. The AF-S seems to be the existing deal in this lens, near a real Silent Wave Motor, unlike some "partial" AF-S lenses NIkon has be selling lately. (Low light is a problem sometimes... duh...)

Now, I took two stars off for the distortion (necessary, I admit), and the slight chromatic aberration I'm getting on slight over-exposures, and the reduced speed as you zoom out to 200, but it gets BOTH of those back well for the INCREDIBLE VR technology and the fact that I have have NOTHING but excellent images come out of it. It kinda eats battery for lunch compared with not using VR, but it's still usuallly lasting me at lowest 300 exposures with an external SB600 as flash. (why haven't you gotten a backup battery nonetheless?!?). I actually shot some indoor 1600 stuff hand-held all the path at 200mm (300 equiv) and 1/40 or 1/50. AMAZING! I understand it works well within low light at the wide expiration too. Haven't tried any available darkness landscapes on the other hand, so I can't say.

So... It IS a do all and be adjectives lens! Maybe not for the pro, but certainly for the guy who wants to pinch some great shots and especially the guy who doesn't want to miss a shot because he's changing lenses (and letting dust into his camera...)

I tried to change my review to 5 stars, Amazon won't agree to me. :-(

It's a great lens. Just buy it!

Awesome lens, January 2, 2006
I ordered the new 18-200mm vr lens after using a Nikon 70-300mm lens with my Nikon D70 camera to photograph my daughter's graduation. I used the camera handheld at a speed of 1/20th of a second or smaller number due to available light. Camera shake was adjectives in most of the photos I took due to the high magnification, available table lamp, and speed I needed to shoot at without a tripod.

I received the new lens on Dec. 27th, and I really put it through its pace. It is lightweight and has a very compact size. The sharpness of the lens is excellent and the vr works flawlessly. I am competent to shoot at full magnification @ 1/20th of a second and slower without any distortion. The lens is very snatched and quiet as it focuses. The photos are beautiful.
To know how to shoot from wide angle 18mm - telephoto 200mm without varying the lens is too good to be true.
This lens is a great investment in versatility, standard, and convenience.

Do Not Get This Lens!, March 6, 2006
There are several reasons why you should not get this lens. First is that I enjoy gotten a reputation for taking great pictures. How will my reputation last if people find out it is really basically the lens? Second is that it replaces so many other lenses that it is sure to cause severance around lens factories in Thailand, Malaysia, and China. You don't want that on your conscience do you? If you use this article to zoom in or out to frame pictures, when will you get exercise by walking long distances and climbing over things so that you can "zoom next to your feet" like a prime lens user? Getting this lens will also mean that you will enjoy wasted your investment in tripods because the VR-II make them almost always unnecessary, and you don't want that do you? The VR-II provides four stops of stabilization, one better than VR, which means that you can shoot at exposures 16 times longer than minus it. Not having to worry just about shaky hands will reduce your incentive to cut stern on the Starbuckaroos, will it not? It also increases the effective speed of the camera so much that you can use polarizers more frequently to shoot through windows and sea which is sure to ruin the privacy of mannequins and fish. Even if you are wrongheaded enough to buy this thing within spite of all these good reason not to, at least have the decorum to wait until I have unloaded my hoary Nikon 24mm-120mm VR lens on Ebay before you do, so I still can get something for it. There is some vignetting at 200mm and vat creep when the lens is extended, which of course is intolerable. It is also horribly expensive, almost half as much as the Nikon 70mm-300mm VR lens it replaces, among tons others. If you are fool enough to get this item, don't say I didn't warn you.

P.S. The one and only thing this mutt won't do is shoot at very shallow depth of area because its maximum aperture is f/3.5. The solution forced on you by this huge shortcoming is to carry a Nikon 50mm f/1.8. Being forced to carry that supplemental lens will cost you surrounded by excess of $90 and weigh you down with several ounces of otherwise unnecessary burden for one of the sharpest lenses available. Don't do it.

Groundbreaking lens, May 14, 2006
By now near are enough pro reviews out there for experienced shooters to read the handwriting on the wall. No, this is not a 17-35 and 70-200 wrapped into a tiny carton. You can't have that for any amount of money. The 18-200VR is NOT meant to oppose the exotics like my 70-200VR or the 200-400VR. It's not even meant to pocket on a prime. It's designed to be the ultimate one lens solution when you don't want a bag full of weighty glass along for the ride. It features moderately fast (but not very) optics, juddering reduction and a lot of work to save CA and distortion down. This it achieves with some nouns, but distortion is still obvious at 18mm. Distortion is sever enough at the huge end to require correction in post (easy to do), but this is NOT lens for those who shoot architecture professionally. This type of distortion is TYPICAL for a lens of this type.
I'm sorry, but those who hold panned this lens either get a bad one (quite possible with rash batch issues reported) or just don't construe what a walk-around lens is for. This is what we all hoped the 24-120 VR would be, but unlike that lens it gets much more done for a short time ago 200 dollars more. Anyone who says there are lenses similar to this for less...well where on earth? No other superzoom is this sharp, has so little CA and throws in VR II as ably...and in a small package!
Now...how angelic is it in the real world? VERY GOOD. It's a meeting for the sharp little 28-200G which means it's only a bit smaller amount sharp than the 70-200VR which costs twice as much. My first images with this lens be stunning, detailed and fairly sharp to the edges above F5. Close focus gives to hand macro results and again this lens is SHARP! Focus speed is quite fast as expected, but I feel that the 18-70 kit lens is a spine quicker. You could shoot all day near this miracle and do it all without reaction like you need a giant lens. If, approaching me, you find yourself shooting mostly in the 35-200mm range on a DSLR, this lens make a lot of sense. It also displayed deeper color saturation and contrast than either the 28-200G or 50mm 1.8. Did I mention that I'm impressed?
Build level is good, but not great. It's hard to be impressed next to any lens build when compared to the 70-200VR. The 18-200 zoom is a bit stiff, the manual focus a bit loose. I suspect Nikon dialed up the zoom stiffness due to early problems beside lens creep early on. It's not creeping at all. The size of the lens is just a bit bigger than the kit lens, perhaps as bulky at the Tokina 12-24 if you own one of those.
VR II exceeds all expectations I was competent to shoot sharp shots at 1.10th sec exposure. But remember this is NOT fast glass. A moving raise objections in dim light will be blurred at such slow shutter speeds. Thus far this is an eye-catching effort from Nikon. Even an experienced shooter could find this lens on the camera most days and be happy. "Average" shooters will have need of nothing more because this lens is that good. The merely areas for improvement given the real precincts of optical design are in the build quality, which could be a bit better. In the downfall, even at 700 dollars plus, this lens is pretty hard to resist.
And no, this is not a "kit lens with VR." The tackle lens only reaches to 70mm. The tools lens also can't do near macro work as this lens can. The kit lens is also not as sharp. And logically this lens has the latest publication of VR that works superbly. There is simply no other lens like this on the market currently. Again, if you're thinking that this lens should be sound and doesn't require compromises to achieve it's design goals, please do your homework back buying. If you need a zoom to cover this range at F2.8, beside no distortion and small size please call Mr. Scott aboard the Starship Enterprise.
For those who question the sharpness of this lens, be aware that near are online tests showing it's even sharper at the corners than the legendary 17-35 2.8! Against my 70-200VR I see a SLIGHT sharpness assistance with the 70-200, but only evident with a 100% crop. Or to put things even more in perspective, this lens works other on a D200. Search the forums for yourself. Most D200 owners are reporting great sharpness even with pro bodies.
This lens is simply a ton of fun for people who similar to to take pictures

A breakthrough! A high aspect lens that almost all Nikon users will want, March 27, 2006
This lens is quite literally a miracle of technology. It provides sharp, clothed performance as a 18mm to 200mm zoom lens. (It provides a 27-300 focal range on a Nikon digital camera due to the 1.5 sensor crop). This is a DX lens, and that`s why is designed only for Nikon digital cameras, not film cameras. The certainty that it is a DX lens also enables this lens to be lighter and smaller than a conventional "full crop" lens. I have be told by pros that this lens would be a "monster" in size were it not for the certainty that it is a DX lens. As it is, it is small and light, and feels great mounted on my D70s.

This is not a cheap lens. It is competent of providing professional-level quality images throughout its span, although it is certainly not the best lens at a given range--no zoom lense is that. The fantastic (yes, I mean it, fantastic) entity about this lens is that over an incredible focal range from wide-angle to telescopic, it provides sharp, bright imagery. Oh, many prime lenses can produce brighter images, and the much more expensive and larger, heavier 70-200 VR Nikkor provides brighter imagery with better bokeh, and many wide-angle Nikkor zoom outperform this lens at the other end of its range, but no other lens I know of can touch this lens for its overall continuum. This lens is capable of producing pleasing, bright, and vivid images througout its breadth.

One big feature of the 18-200 VR is the Vibration Reduction technology that is built into the lens. This stabilizes the lens and allows it to run good photographs in much dimmer restrained than would otherwise be practical, and to some extent VR does the same thing that a tripod would do, i.e. stabilize the camera. The VR works, too, contributing to the sharpness of the metaphors. VR is not a substitute for fast glass, which is one intention that very serious photographers will not be junking their calorific professional lenses (such as the incomparable 70-200 VR zoom, for example, or the wonderful 17-55 zoom). A discussion of the shortcomings and advantages of VR is beyond the scope of this review, but suffice to say that the VR on this 18-200 VR lens contributes to its skill to produce very sharp images.

This is the classic "walking around" lens, and it is absolutely the lens of choice in many/most situations contained by which it is simply impractical to either devolution lenses, or bring along more than one lens. Almost all users of Nikon digital cameras will want to consider this lens. I am blown away with the similes that I have been competent to achieve using the 18-200VR.

Best walkaround lens ever made., February 12, 2006
My thoughts:
- It's sharp at the center at all apertures and at adjectives focal lenghts, however it falls short on the edges ("sweet point" at f10 or f11, IMO)
- It's a very contrasty lens.
- The VR system works very really good (Im able to take steady handheld shots even at 1/1.3s)
- It's well-built, solid and reliable.
- The autofocus speed is very express and accurate.
- does the lens creep? Yes, it does (sometimes) but I really dont mind it.
- The 11.1X zoom is unbeatable, better than any zoom ever made, and it's faster at long end than the Sigma or Tamron ones (f5.6 vs 6.3)
- It's a notably recommendend lens, no doubt on it.
- Some token images at full resolution taken with D50 can be found on the correlation below:

http://www.pbase.com/afukuda/cusco_puno

Great for what it is meant for!, February 20, 2006
The positives:

The 18-200 zoon range is indestructible and unbelievable. VR II works great (most of the time), although you should still follow the good rules of holding the camera steady... no sloppy shooting. Lens exceedingly sharp for a zoom, not just zooms surrounded by this range.

The negatives:

Most of the negative are typical of a big zoom. There is noticeable barrel & pincushion distortion, just about 90% of which is fixable using Photoshop or PTLens (free) software. Vignetting at the corners is observable. I have not noticed considerable CA, although other reviews do mention it. I also notice light fall sour at the corners in certain situations. But the distortions are considered better than adjectives the zooms of this range.

Verdict:

If you requirement just one walkaround lens and dont mind the minor distortions (and have the dough to spend), travel for it. The only problem seems to be the relentless wait in stores everywhere.

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