When it comes to corner performance @ 200mm, the Nikon 55-300mm takes the lead just like in the 105mm corner test. It's a nice light lens for its range. Build quality is okay (although the metal mount is a nice touch). As you can see, the lens performs very well at all apertures when shooting at 55mm. The image wide open @ f/4.5 is just a tad softer than others, but almost unnoticeable, which is very good. Sharpness Test – Nikon 55-300mm @ 55mm Corner Frame Detailed specifications for the lens, along with MTF charts and other useful data can be found in our lens database. NIKON D3S + 300mm f/4 @ 420mm, ISO 450, 1/1250, f/5.6

Nikon AF-S DX Nikkor 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED VR Review

Those looking for a reasonably priced, high quality, telephoto addition to their Nikon 18-55mm kit lens can't really go far wrong with this lens, especially if they really want that 300mm focal length.Again, the center of the frame is sharp from f/5.6 to f/11.0 with a very slightly softer image at f/4.5. I have now taken many more pictures with this lens on my D7100, specifically looking for difficult subjects and conditions. In most cases, it has been pretty good to about 200 or 210mm, with or without a Kenko 1.4x TC, in or out of crop mode. So up to roughly 400mm DX net it's fine for "normal" subjects.

Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED Vibration Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED Vibration

Autofocus is a bit slow, as it is with a lot of these "older" lenses, like the 70-300 and even the 18-140. So it's probably not the best tool for rapidly moving wildlife and sports shots, as the reviewers point out. But it does work well enough for almost all static subjects, except that it searches for focus at long distance subjects if there is any haze in the air. It does eventually find focus, especially if I help by manually focusing and then letting autofocus do the rest. At both apertures, the Nikon 28-300mm is clearly taking the lead. When it comes to corners, the Nikon 55-300mm performs a little better at 70mm than the 28-300mm though. Nikon 55-300mm vs Nikon 28-300mm @ 300mm CenterBuild quality is pretty decent for a consumer zoom. Most of the outer parts are plastic – contributing the light weight of the lens –, but the optical elements are made of high-grade glass. The zoom ring is wide and ridged, and zoom creep is not an issue. On our test sample, the zooming action was a little on the rough side.

Nikon 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G VR Review - Optical Features Nikon 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G VR Review - Optical Features

The zoom is smooth and image quality is as good as the venerable 70-300 VR lens, perhaps a bit better to my eyes (especially at 300mm). Distortion results for the Nikon 55-300mm ƒ/4.5-5.6 are typical for this class of lens, showing a complicated mix of both barrel and pincushion distortion in the longer range of its telephoto focal length. Between 55-67mm, distortion is slightly barrelled, at around +0.3% in the corners; the lens reaches a kind of parity around 62mm. After this point, the corners show pincushion distortion while the central region shows some slight barrel distortion. At its worst, we note almost -0.5% pincushion distortion in the corners above 135mm; similarly, almost +0.3% barrel distortion distortion throughout the image above 100mm. The 70-300 may be sharper because (extending the reasoning often given for why prime lenses are superior) it is easier to construct a quality lens in a narrower zoom range.

Corners look all the same to me in terms of sharpness, with a slight amount of visible purple fringing in the corners. While the 28-300mm works well on both full-frame and cropped sensor cameras, its 28mm focal length is too long for general use on cropped sensor cameras (with an equivalent focal length of 42mm). Therefore, a redesigned version of the lens with a wider field of view makes the 18-300mm VR a more attractive superzoom option for DX users.