New Nikon AF-S 300 f4 PF ED VR sample photos

[Lance B]

Borrowed a friend's brand new 300mm f4E PF ED VR which he picked up yesterday here in Sydney, possibly one of the first to be sold to the buying public anywhere in the world. It's still early days but I am very, very impressed with it, not yet prepared to say categorically whether it is as good or better than my 300 f2.8 VRII, but so far it seems to be at least as good, but more testing needs to be undertaken. Unfortunately we were at a park where most of the birds were far off so, I mainly used the 1.4x TCIII and a few with the 1.7x TCII, and they performed brilliantly, both in AF speed and accuracy but also giving very sharp results. Most of the shots with the TC's below are wide open!!

Unfortunately, as it isn't my lens, I only had about 1 hour to put it through it's paces as my friend needed to go to a another engagement and I had to (reluctantly) give the lens back. However, we are hoping to go to the zoo on Monday together to try it out mostly without the TC's to see how it performs naked as we can get closer to the birds and animals there. This should really show off how sharp the bare lens is and we can see how good the bokeh and other attributes are and how it stacks up against one of Nikon's best, the 300 f2.8 VRII.

The lens is so small and light weight, especially compared to my 300 f2.8 VRII which positively dwarfs it, but even compared to the old 300 f4 and even compared to the 24-70 f2.8!! In fact, it's almost too small and light, if that's possible, as it is lighter than the camera itself (D810) and it just doesn't seem right that a 300mm lens should be lighter than the camera, especially a lens with such great IQ (so far).

Haven't really tested VR as it was nice and bright today. Hopefully at the zoo we will see how good the VR is.

Here are some tantilisers, some with the lens bare and some with TC's. As I say, they look very very promising!

D810 + 300 f4 VR f5.6
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D810 + 300 f4 VR + 1.4x TCIII, f5.6 wide open!
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D810 + 300 f4 VR + 1.4x TCIII f5.6 wide open
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D810 + 300 f4 VR + 1.4x TCIII f5.6 wide open!
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