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Simply spoken – WOW. This lense is a total stunner. It is very sharp, easy to handle, relatively lightweight and yet cheap. Also autofocus is convincingly fast. Works great with the peak design stripes when right-side connector ist attached to the lense handle instead of base plate. Weight becomes an issue after a while, thow.
Currently, it is my favorite lense when I am outside.
Some impressions?
I have bought the Nikon D7200 with the bigger kit zoom lense, the Nikon AF-S DX Nikkor 18-140 mm F/3.5-5.6G ED VR. Time to give some credit, because it is a perfect companion to the D7200 in the hand of a beginner.
For birds, you have to be very lucky that one decides to pop up right in front of you, or you cheat and go to the zoo. All of the following pictures are from the Cologne zoo, though only the stork is actually hold in an aviary.
I have checked out the incredibly cheap tele-zoom lense Nikon AF-S DX Nikkor 55-300mm f4.5-5.6G ED VR. I was looking for a reasonably priced and lightweight zoom glas for taking bird pictures in the park and in the woods. Unfortunately I had to return this product since the quality concerning sharpness on the long end did not quite please me. Although it was really close. I did not expect much and the lense is really light with a good vibration reduction and an ok focusing performance. Finishing and manual handling however were not acceptable for me, though of course the overall price of around 200€ has to come from somewhere.
Nevertheless I was able to take some good pictures, like this nuthatch (Kleiber) at the Rheinpark in Cologne, Germany.
Or this hawk (Habicht) in the Johannes-Giesbert-Park in Cologne. Here the reduced quality at 300mm becomes obvious, because it is zoomed to almost 100%. Wide aperture was not a good idea, thow – not only the lense to be blamed, here.
This robin is probably the best picture I took, because I could stop down on the aperture. Makes a great difference, as I learned after a while.
