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The Nikon 55-200mm f4-5.6 AF-S VR lens doesn’t exactly feel like high quality optics in action but what really matters is how it performs. Many modern lenses use large amounts of plastic and perform very well so what about the Nikon 55-200 VR?
Full Aperture : At 55mm and f4 sharpness is very good - better than I’d expected. Vignetting, while present, only shows as a slight darkening in the extreme corners. The main fault is quite noticeable barrel distortion. 85mm is much the same, still very sharp but with more vignetting, darkening a wider area too. From 135-200mm the crisp sharpness of the shorter focal lengths gradually disappears and vignetting increases. Most noticeable at 200mm, where results at f5.6 are quite soft even in the center, with noticeable pincusion distortion and vignetting.
Stopped down : One stop down, at f8, even results at 200mm are now very good in the center and over the whole frame at shorter focal lengths. However, even at f11 the corners are still a little soft at 200mm.
VR - Vibration Reduction is Nikon’s optical stabilisation system and in the Nikon 55-200 VR it really does help. At 200mm I’d normally aim to set a shutter speed of at least 1/1000 sec to be sure of sharp results, but with the Nikon 55-200 VR most of my shots hand held at 1/200 sec were sharp - a 2.5 stop advantage - Which is an excellent performance.
Conclusion :
This is actually quite a good lens from 55 - 135mm but only OK at 200mm. Considering the very limited maximum aperture of f5.6 at that focal length I’d expected better. However this is an almost universal trait with tele zooms, especially 70-300mms, where performance at shorter focal lengths is excellent, but falls off noticeably at the long end.
Vignetting - darkening in the corners - and distortion are more noticeable than I expected for a lens with a smallish zoom range and modest maximum apertures. One of the main arguments for buying two lenses like the Nikon 18-55 VR and the Nikon 55-200 VR rather than something like the Tamron 18-250 is that because of the limited zoom ranges of each lens you’d get better sharpness and less vignetting or distortion. As the Nikon 55-200 VR has plenty of both, and feels cheap but isn’t, that argument falls down. If I was just starting out I’d buy something like the Tamron to begin with. It’s far better made and sharper at the long end of the zoom.
The big plus in favor of this lens is the optical stabilisation - VR - system, which works well, and most lenses in this price range don’t have. The Nikon 55-200 VR isn’t a bad lens overall, so if you already have the 18-55 VR it’s a good match, especially if you get a good deal on the price.
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