Nikon Superzoom delivers, at least on the wide end
Written: Dec 18 '08 (Updated Jan 01 '09)
Product Rating:
Pros: Massive zoom range, good center sharpness until beyond 100mm
Cons: Corners aren't great, distortion, sharpness suffers past 100mm
The Bottom Line: Great compromise lens; you give up corner sharpness and possibly some wideangle range, but you don't need to swap lenses and can succeed where 2-lens sets fail.
This is part of my 3-part series on Nikon consumer-grade DX lenses: 16-85, 18-105, and 18-200.
A lot of people are scratching their heads over the consumer-grade VR lenses on the market from Nikon right now, and I have had the privilege of using two 18-105s, two 16-85s, and an 18-200, as well as a Tokina 11-16, Nikon 70-300, Nikon 50 AF-D, Nikon 105 VR Micro, and Nikon 24-70 (FX) to compare the consumer lenses to.
The 18-200mm used to sell for $800 but has free-fallen to about $600-$650 as of December 2008. It's not a big lens despite its range, and it's about the same size as a 16-85 or 18-105 lens and weighs roughly 1.25 pounds.
AUTOFOCUS
Quiet and snappy, no problems tracking even jets flying at 500mph.
FILTER SIZE
72mm isn't that common, though it's becoming more so, and it's not cheap for filters.
VIGNETTING
Relatively low but very visible wide open at 18mm.
SHARPNESS
This lens is sharp in the center at all focal lengths under about 100mm. The corners are where the quailty suffers, especially past 100mm. For some reason, even at f/8, this lens simply isn't that sharp at the long end, especially in the corners. The lens sharpens up as you stop down, reaching maximum sharpness at about f/5.6 or f/8 at the wide end, but past about 24mm or so, you will want f/8 for maximum sharpness. Note that this lens quickly goes to f/5.6 as you move away from 18mm, so expect most of the focal lengths to be f/4 or slower.
BUILD QUALITY
The build quality is good, with a sealed gasket in the back to help keep dust out, as well as a fair amount of metal (metal mount) and high-grade plastic. The lens is solid to the touch, just like the 16-85mm VR. It feels more solid than the 18-105mm VR without a doubt.
DISTORTION/CA
The 18-200mm VR really suffers from distortion, but what do you expect from a superzoom? It's complex distortion that not even the most advanced software can fully correct, so expect barrel distortion at a gruesome 4% at the wide end, and pincushion distortion as you go into the telephoto ranges. The 16-85mm and 18-105mm lenses from Nikon have MUCH better distortion control, especially at the wide end, but all of them distort to some degree. Definitely don't rely on this lens to shoot things with straight lines like buildings.
TECHNICAL SPECS
The "G" designation means no aperture ring, just a zoom ring and focus ring. This means that this lens won't have autofocus, just manual focus, on cameras without CPUs. Luckily, digital cameras have such CPUs, so Nikon's adherence to compatibiilty wins again. The lens is DX, so it's meant for crop-body cameras like the D40, 60, 70, 80, 90, 300, etc. that use DX-sized sensors, though technically you can use it in cropped mode on the D3 and other full-frame Nikon dSLRs.
The Vibration Reduction ("VR") is newer VRII technology which Nikon claims (emphasis on claims) will give you four extra stops. The way VR works is that the lens and your camera talk to each other (they MUST because this is a "G" series lens which means it only works on cameras that have onboard computers, which means any digital camera but not most old film cameras). The camera senses your shaky hands and tells the lens to move in the opposite direction so that in the end, the movements cancel each other out and produce a sharp image on the sensor.
REAL-LIFE VR USAGE VR II is excellent on this lens and really works and is MUCH more important on a lens like this than on the 16-85mm, which has a shorter max focal range. If you have shaky hands, you will see it at 85mm and REALLY see it at 200mm. You can feel a steady vibration when the VR II is on. It's better than the VR I on the 18-105mm lens, which gives only 3 stops, not 4 stops, of stabilization. While one stop doesn't sound like much, it can make the difference in some circumstances since it corresponds to a HALVING of shutter speed! Further, the VR I system is On/Off only; it doesn't have the On/Normal/Active switch that VR II systems have. The difference is that Active lets you use VR II while in a moving vehicle or other such situation where the photographer is moving at a steady rate. In practice, I have found VR to work less well than Nikon claims, so you should subtract a stop just in case, which means this lens gives you about a 3-stop advantage over non-VR lenses, letting you octuple your shutter speed with no ill effects due to camera shake. Of course if your subject is moving around, no amount of stabilization will matter, so VR is really only useful for stationary subjects.
MACRO MODE
Macro mode is usable with a varying magnification (see below in FOCAL RANGE) that I guessitmate to be 1:4 (so at maximum a real-life object will be roughly 25% of that size on the sensor, which is mediocre but usable), and bokeh (background blur) is decent and comparable to the 18-105 and 18-200. You only get 7 aperture blades so the bokeh won't be as smoothly round as on 9-aperature bladed lenses.
FOCAL RANGE
18-200mm is huge. Period. It's the 35-mm equivalent of 27mm-300mm which should cover everything from mildly wideangle to moderate/serious telephoto. It blows away the 16-85 and 18-105 easily... but with drawbacks.
Drawbacks include the aforementioned distortion and less-than-sharp corners (even stopped down to f/8 the corners aren't that sharp, and it only gets worse if you zoom past 100mm). Worse, this is not a true 200mm lens except at infinity. So if you point your lens at some distant mountains, it's like a 200mm lens, but due to the way the optics work, the closer you are to your subject, the more range you lose, so if you shoot something at minimum focal length (which is about 18 inches), it acts like a 140mm lens instead.
The 18-105 is sharper in the overlapping zoom range by far.
The 16-85 is sharper in the overlapping zoom range by even more, AND it can go 2mm wider, which is 11% wider (2/18 = 0.11).
BUT... the reason why I still have my 18-200mm is simple: I treat it as a 18-105mm that is always sharp in the center and needs to be stopped down to get decently sharp corners, AND in an emergency, it can go from 105 to 200mm, losing a lot of sharpness along the way. But that's only in an EMERGENCY, because I normally carry a 70-300mm VR lens to take sharp, long-distance shots. So the 18-200 is a great walkaround lens that could use some supporting lenses at the telephoto end, and perhaps at the wide end as well if you can't live with its distortion. It's the ultimate vacation lens when you can pack only one lens. And you don't waste as much time swapping lenses--even a less than sharp photo from an 18-200 beats no photo at all if you were busy swapping between your ultra-sharp lenses with shorter zoom ranges.
Now, if you have the money, the better combo is probably the 16-85 + 70-300, but that's if you have enough money to buy both at the same time. Else, you can buy just a camera body plus this lens and happily use it until the day you get a 70-300mm VR, at which point you can sell this lens and get a 16-85mm VR if you want the extra 2mm on the wide end, extra sharpness, and less distortion. Or if you want just the extra sharpness, you can get pair the 18-105mm with the 70-300mm VR. (I've reviewed all of these lenses on epinions.)
CONCLUSION
I can't wholeheartedly recommend this lens because the 18-105mm VR is a great cheap starter lens that you can use while saving up for a 70-300mmm VR; that'd be a fairly good combo.
A great combo is the 16-85 + 70-300mm VR which necessitates some lens switching, but it gives you excellent coverage at both the wideangle and telephoto range with very good sharpness. You will need good light to use that combo, as neither lens is fast (the 16-85 is f/3.5-5.6 and the 70-300mm VR is f/4.5-5.6), but at least you get VR II on those lenses to help take shots of stationary subjects.
Else, the 18-200mm VR is a quirkly compromise, a third path if you will; it's more expensive than either the 16-85mm or 18-105mm VR but gives you greater range while you're waiting to get a 70-300mm VR. It can take photos that you might miss altogether if you had to switch lenses. But it gives up sharpness and distortion to the 18-105 and 16-85 (and 2mm on the wide end to the 16-85). On the plus side, you save money and don't have to switch lenses as often, and you can basically treat this lens as a somewhat softer, higher-distorting version of the 18-105mm VR that has better VR and can go all the way to 200mm (at infinity) during emergencies. If I had to switch between 2 lenses during an airshow that I was at, I'd go crazy; I needed to be able to zoom way out to capture jets flying across the Golden Gate bridge, and then a second later zoom way in to photograph aerial stunts. That's simply a pain to do, or outright impossible to do, with the 16-85 + 70-300 combo!
DETAILED COMPARISON TO OTHER NIKON DX VR lenses:
The biggest competitors to this lens are probably the 16-85mm VR and the 18-105mm VR. I actually owned all three at one point in time before selling one to help pay my rent. If you're having difficulty deciding between the three, here are some quick comparisons and how I'd rank each of them:
Distortion: 1. 16-85 2. 18-105 3. 18-200 (what do you expect, it's a super-zoom, it will distort the worst, especially at wideangle!)
Sharpness: 1. 16-85 (this is as about as sharp as you can get with a zoom lens without going to a pro-grade zoom lens costing over $1000) 2. 18-105 (almost as sharp as the 16-85) 3. 18-200 (unless you really need to print big prints of over 16x20" in size where sharpness really matters, this could be the only lens you buy; the center is sharp until you go past 130mm at which point it gets softer; the edges aren't as sharp but should be good enough for most users)
Cost: 1. 18-200 (yes it costs more than the other two lenses, at about $600-650 retail, but it covers a much larger focal range, at least at infinity. At shorter distances from camera to subject, this lens actually doesn't quite reach 200mm due to how zoom optics work, more like 140mm.) 2. 18-105 (costs half as much as a 18-200mm, but it's still so sharp and VR I is better than no VR at all!) You can get this lens for $300 retail, and the price is falling due to so many people who already have other lenses selling this kit lens and keeping only the D90 body. 3. 16-85 (costs almost as much as 18-200mm without the huge focal range, but it's the sharpest). You can get this lens for about $500-550 retail.
Bokeh: 1. 18-200 (zoom way out and step back for best background blur, or "bokeh") 2. 18-105 (can't zoom out as far as the 18-200, so the blur is less) 3. 16-85 (can't zoom out that far and is slightly smaller aperture at 85mm relative to the other two lenses)
Build quality: 1. TIE 16-85 (well built, has metal mount and rubber gasket to seal the space between the camera and lens) 1. TIE 18-200 (similar build as 16-85) 3. 18-105 (lack of rubber gasket means a little more dust might enter the camera body during usage)
Zoom range: 1. 18-200 (HUGE zoom range equivalent to 27mm to 300mm in 35mm film terms) 2. TIE 16-85 (that 2mm on the wide end is bigger than it sounds; 16 v. 18 is 11% wider (2mm divided into 18mm = .11). Wideangle is useful for certain types of portraits and landscapes and for photographing interior spaces.) 2. TIE 18-105 (yes it has longer zoom range but for most people 105 is already more than needed since it's actually equivalent to 158mm on 35mm-film)
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