Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 300mm f/4D IF-ED Lens

Product Information

The Nikon 300mm f/4D AF-S is compatible with all current and older Nikon teleconverters. So far I have mentioned the Nikon TC-14E II (which pretty much stays glued to my 300mm f/4), but both the TC-17E II and the TC-20E III teleconverters will also physically attach to the lens. However, it does not mean that you can effectively use the lens with all three teleconverters. In my experience, the lens suffers quite a bit when using anything other than 1.4x teleconverters. Some people are quite happy with the TC-17E II, which makes the 300mm f/4 a 510mm f/6.3 lens, but I personally have not had great success with this combo. The newer DSLRs such as Nikon D7100, D800 and D4 with the “Advanced Multi-CAM 3500” AF module certainly work better with this combo, however, I am still not very happy with the wide-open performance of the lens. Stopped down to f/8, the combo can produce pretty good results, but AF accuracy certainly suffers and you have to watch out for camera shake (keep that shutter speed high). Forget about using the TC-20E II or III (2x) teleconverters with this lens – there is too much loss of IQ with this combo. Stone Face, Yosemite Valley, 15 May 2015. D810, wide-open at f/4 at 1/1,000 at ISO 100. Bigger or full-resolution file. So, where can quality suffer? It’s well reported that a by-product of Phase Fresnel lens technology can be some unusual shapes contained within out of focus elements when shooting into bright lights. However, I didn’t use the lens under such conditions and I think I would have to go out of my way and make a deliberate effort to actually create this problem! So in reality, this wasn’t an issue for me at all.

Designing telephoto lenses is a battle with chromatic aberration. We were at the greatest disadvantage in this battle with this 300mm lens. Chromatic aberration increases along with the focal length of the lens. This is easiest to understand if we imagine that it is proportional to the length of the lens. If the length of the lens is doubled—the focal length is doubled—the amount of chromatic aberration is doubled at the same time. Further, the amount of chromatic aberration also increases with the adoption of the common telephoto structure used for the Nikkor-P Auto 300mm f/4.5 to achieve a shorter total length. The concave lens in the rear group reduces the total length of the lens and achieves a consistently flat image plane, but it also works to increase all types of aberrations, including chromatic aberration, generated by the first group of elements. It was Tadashi Takahashi that accepted the challenge to improve the performance of this 300mm lens. Along with Wakimoto, Isshiki, and Higuchi, Takahashi was one of the pioneers of NIKKOR development. He participated in the design of many industrial NIKKOR lenses, as well as the original EL Nikkor 80mm f/5.6 introduced in Tale 64. Older Focusing motor means slower AF with newer camera bodies. Still very capable AF, just not as fast as newer versions.Apochromatic lenses have special lens elements (aspheric, extra-low dispersion etc) to minimize the problem, hence they usually cost more. AHA! It turns out that my lens reviewed here is defective. Nikon has a service advisory where if you send them your lens, they will fix this if you have a very early serial number as I have. It’s also a ‘FX’ lens, so it will work with all full frame and cropped sensor Nikon DSLRs. Using a camera with a cropped sensor, such as the Nikon D500, produces a field of view which is equivalent to that of a 450mm lens. Vibration reduction gives 4.5 stops of compensation and includes ‘normal’ and ‘sport’ mode. A focus limiter allows you to adjust the range from ‘full’ to no less then 3 metres. As always, let's take a look at this lens' rendering characteristics with sample images. The sample images for this Tale were captured using the Z 6 full-frame mirrorless camera and FT-Z mount adapter. Thanks to the high-definition electronic viewfinder built into the Z 6, it was even easier to achieve accurate and precise focus than it is with an SLR camera, which made using this manual focus lens to capture sample photos extremely easy.

Here is a sample macro shot without a close-up filter (300mm f/4 @ f/8.0, 1/500 sec, handheld): NIKON D300 @ 300mm, ISO 200, 1/500, f/8.0Image stabilization: Yes, VR 4th (?) generation. At a focal length of 300mm and with today’s high resolution sensors image stabilization is an indispensable feature. Its predecessor had no image stabilization at all. The VR can be switched off and also offers a “normal” and a “sport” mode. The latter is recommended when “photographing athletes and other subjects that are moving rapidly and unpredictably”. [+]

The ∞ - 3m setting (∞ - 10') prevents the lens from focusing closer than 3m/10.' Use this only if you're having problems with the lens jumping all over the range from very close to very far. Chromatic aberration is the lens' inability to focus on the sensor or film all colours of visible light at the same point. Severe chromatic aberration gives a noticeable fringing or a halo effect around sharp edges within the picture. It can be cured in software. As you can see from the above chart, the lens provides excellent resolution at its maximum aperture of f/4, with very sharp center / mid-frame performance and slightly worse corners. Stopping down the lens does not do much to improve performance and the sweet spot seems to be at around f/5.6. If you want to compare the lens performance to other lenses like Nikon 80-400mm, see the Lens Comparisons section of this review. This lens is also for those who demand a true 300mm lens whose effective focal length does not shorten at close distances, as it the case with many zooms.

Nikon AF-S Nikkor 300mm f/4E PF ED VR Lens Review

Overall, the bokeh on the Nikkor 300mm f/4E VR seems to be quite good despite the fact that the lens uses a Fresnel lens element. You can see examples of bokeh in a number of images in this review and based on the real world shooting conditions, the Fresnel lens element does not seem to be doing a lot of damage: NIKON D750 + 300mm f/4 @ 300mm, ISO 800, 1/500, f/4.0 See my Nikon 70-200mm f2.8G VR II review for more details where this lens earned a Highly Recommended rating. Nikon AF-S 300mm f4.0E PF ED VR final thoughts