Affordable telephoto lens for 35mm or crop

Author's Rating:

Pros: High quality, cheap price

Cons: Not great in low light, difficult to hold for long periods

The Bottom Line: 
Unless you shoot a lot of moving subjects in low light, this may be the only telephoto lens you ever need. Long enough focal length even for casual birdwatchers!

Author's Review
I tested on a crop-frame D90 camera. My review is for crop-frame Nikon DSLRs only, such as the D3000, D3100, D5000, D5100, D7000, D40, D40X, D60, D70, D80, D90, D200, D300, and D300S.

Pros:

- Excellent sharpness, though it starts dropping off as you approach 300mm. 

- Great zoom range. On a crop-frame camera, you get a 1.5x multiplier effect, so 70-300mm effectively becomes 105-450mm (in 35mm film terms), and it's unlikely that most people will go anywhere near 450mm on a regular basis.  Even in the cheap seats of football games, I didn't approach 300mm most of the time.

Note, however, if you do more than casual birdwatching, you may want an even longer lens, like 400mm, 500mm, or even 600mm. But those lenses cost as much as a car and weigh a lot more.

The last daytime football game I was at, I had an easy time shooting everything from closeups of players to zooming out to 70mm and capturing most of the field on my D90.  I never had to go to anything under 70mm, so I kept the same lens on during the entire football game.  This lens is perfect for stadium seating in good lighting, as I could shoot everything at f/9 to ensure a large depth of field.  I also used it with video on the D90 and had only one out-of-focus video, and that wasn't the fault of the lens but rather the slow live view autofocus of the D90.

The only shot I took at max length (300mm, or 450mm effective focal length on 35mm film) was across the stadium of my friend in the cheap seats. It wasn't the sharpest photo ever, but it was decently sharp, and we laughed when I sent him the photo after the game--he didn't think I could take a photo of him from that far away.

-This consumer-grade lens works for both crop-sensor and full-frame cameras, so you can use it on everything from the lowest-end D40/D40x/D60 to the top-line D3x/D3/D700.  Saves you a lens upgrade.  Though to be fair, it vignettes (corner darkens) a bit more on full-frame cameras.  But if you can afford a full-frame camera, you're probably going to have enough money to buy a truly pro-grade lens anyway, rather than this lens.

- Vibration Reduction (VR) really works! I took this to a football game and tried taking shots with and without VR.  When you flick the switch, the view holds much more still, making it possible to take photos at much slower (as much as 16 times slower, but more realistically more like 10 times slower) shutter speeds.  Better yet, it's lens-VR not in-body VR, so what you see through the viewfinder is what your camera "sees" as well, unlike Sony and Pentax DSLRs and other camera makers that use in-body image stabilization--with those systems you don't see the "effects" of VR until you take the photo.  The VR makes an quiet hum (not enough to affect video) and you can feel the vibration, so you know if it's kicking in even without having to look through the viewfinder.

- 9-bladed diaphragm makes for round out-of-focus blur (bokeh). 

- 750 grams is not as heavy as it could be.  It isn't light, but it isn't THAT heavy of a lens.

- Autofocus was fast, nearly silent, and accurate. I was very impressed at how every shot I took of marching bands, cheerleaders, football players, etc. turned out sharp.  (Caveat: I was using a Nikon D90 which has a mid-grade focus system... not pro, but not entry-level.  Still, I think even an entry-level Nikon D40 would do well with this lens.)

- If you leave the switch on Auto (Auto/Manual), you can at any time twist the focus ring to switch to manual focus.

Cons:

- The build quality is okay. The lens telescopes out and I have no doubt that if I dropped the lens while it was telescoped, it would suffer.  It's plastic and a consumer-grade lens, what do you expect? At least it has a rubber gasket and is fairly well sealed against dust.

- Long! Just shy of 6" long, about 3" diameter. This is easily my longest lens and barely fits into my camera bag. Unlike all of my other lenses, it's so long that I can't attach it to my camera and put it into the main compartment at the same time.

- 67mm filter size is common and relatively cheap. Also, although I have not personally tried it, I bet you could use a step down ring and attach a 62mm filter to the lens and be okay with a crop body camera at most or all focal lengths. You would not get away with it for a full-frame camera, though. If you have a spare, expensive 62mm filter (such as a polarizer), you may want to try this out before running out and buying a 67mm filter. Step down rings only cost a buck or two.

- The minimum focus distance is about 4.5 feet, so don't expect to use this as a macro lens by itself. Slap a Raynox DCR-150 or DCR-250 on it, though, and it can become a viable, albeit large, macro lens.

- Difficult to hold because the focus ring takes up a huge chunk of real estate; it wasn't particularly comfortable to hold the lens barrel without touching the focus ring.

Other:

- Cheap for what you get, as long as there is plenty of light, or you are willing to crank up ISO to keep your shutter speed fast, or your subject is stationary.  Where this lens will fail is if there is low light AND your subject is moving AND your shutter speed is long, because the lens's maximum aperture size is f/4.5.  Even VR won't save you there, because VR stabilizes your camera shake but that doesn't mean anything if your subject is moving around.  So if you take it to a poorly-lit night game of football and turn VR on, you'll get sharp pictures of everything NOT moving (the grass, goalposts, etc.) and blurry images of players, UNLESS you crank your ISO up enough to keep your shutter speed fast (at least 1/200 seconds, perhaps more).

The problem with cranking ISO up, of course, is that it adds more and more noise to your photos. Videos aren't as affected since they are much smaller resolutions and are compressed more anyway.

Update Jan. 16, 2012: Sensors have really advanced since I first wrote this review more than 3 years ago. Something like the D5100 or D7000 allow you to crank up ISO to crazy numbers before suffering significant image degradation. This helps address the small maximum aperture problem on this lens and makes it useful not only for daytime shooting but also for nighttime shooting.