Pros: Screamingly sharp, and 16mm is true wideangle (24mm 35mm-equivalent).
Cons: Expensive because it's new. DX only, gets autocropped on FX cameras like the D700.
The Bottom Line: Sharp wideangle range with useful telephoto range. If you have the money, get the 70-300mm VR to deal with telephoto shots beyond 85mm.
aloofyouth's Full Review: Nikon AF-S DX 16-85 mm f/3.5-5.6G VR Lens
This is part of my 3-part series on Nikon consumer-grade DX lenses: 16-85, 18-105, and 18-200. (I'll write the 18-200 very soon.)
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.
Skip to the bottom to read my conclusion, or keep reading to read the details!
The 16-85mm VR lens is a new lens by Nikon (came out spring of 2008) and has gradually sunk from its initial street price of over $600. You can find this lens for $550 easily now, and it will probably drop a little more. The lens is about 1 pound.
AUTOFOCUS
Quiet and responsive.
FILTER SIZE
67mm is common and relatively cheap.
VIGNETTING
Relatively low but very visible wide open at 16mm.
SHARPNESS
This lens is screamingly sharp for a consumer-grade lens, and at all focal lengths--even wide open! So feel free to blast away at f/3.5 and 16mm. The lens really sharpens up from f/5.6 to f/11, though and is comparable to the $1500-1600 Nikon 24-70mm pro-grade lens at those apertures, though neither lens is as sharp as a good prime like the 50mm AF-D (which in turn looks bad when compared to the 105mm VR Micro). Note that this lens quickly goes to f/5.6 as you move away from 16mm, so expect most of the focal lengths to be about 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, and I doubt it would suffer too much unless I dropped it from more than a couple of feet off the ground.
DISTORTION/CA
The 16-85mm VR has low distortion, but it will not give you perfectly straight lines at 16mm, so use something else for shots of architecture or prepare to have to use photoshop to correct the distortion.
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; just don't use this lens with an old, non-digital, film camera!
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. It just won't be very pretty and you'd have to crop photos in Photoshop afterwards.
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. You can feel a steady vibration when it's 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 1:4.6 magnification (so at maximum a real-life object will be roughly 20% 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.
FOCAL RANGE
The 16-85mm is difficult to classify because it's 2mm wider than the 18-xxx Nikon lenses. 2mm may not sound like much, but 16/18 = .89 so it's 11% wider than 18mm, which is significant. I've found this lens to be an excellent walk-around lens because it can grab that extra 11% on the wide end and not give up too much on the tele end (85mm and 105mm aren't going to be that different; just walk a little closer to a subject if you must). The 85mm is a lot shorter than the 200mm, though, so if you expect to zoom way in a lot, the 18-200mm is a better all-in-one choice. However, the 16-85 + 70-300mm VR combo is very popular as a two-piece solution, and that combo is sharper than the 18-200mm, which distorts more and is much less sharp at 85-200mm compared to the 16-85 + 70-300mm VR combo. (I've also reviewed the 70-300mm VR lens on epinions.)
Be warned though that sometimes it pays to have a 18-200mm because you need to quickly go from wideangle to telephoto in a few seconds, such as at airshows. But in most circumstances the 2-lens combo's sharpness, less distortion, and wider angle at the wide end works better.
CONCLUSION If you shoot wideangle at all, aren't on a strict budget, and can live without the massive focal range of the 18-200mm, this is the walkaround lens to get. 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.
DETAILED COMPARISON TO OTHER NIKON DX VR lenses:
The biggest competitors to this lens are probably the 18-200mm 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)
Overall, there is no clear-cut winner if money were no object, but the if money matters, the 18-105 is the clear winner. The 18-200's huge zoom range and convenience factors make it worth $600+, the 16-85mm offers better wideangle performance and sharpness at the expense of a shorter zoom range and still costs $500+, and the 18-105mm is in-between in terms of zoom range and sharpness, with slightly worse build quality and VR, but it costs less than $300!
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