Nikon AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 24–120mm f/3.5–5.6 IF-ED

Acquired new in Xi’An, China

1. VR is first generation and don’t expect it to save the day. Use it as if there is no VR and expect only the pictures that you can previously shoot with 50% success rate to be shot now at 90% success rate. However, this VR can bring you to slightly higher limits at telephoto than without. VR will fail when shooting straight up and down meaning it works best when shooting parallel to the ground. Sometimes, it can be beneficial to turn VR off for maximum clarity.
2. This VR is freggin’ loud. And while it’s instant, you can still clearly hear the gyroscopes spin up and spin down when you half-depress the trigger. During rigorous movements, you can feel the VR mechanism move as well, giving a pretty unassuring feeling.
3. Chromatic aberrations are visibly stronger straight out on a D200. But by pretty much the same amount in every picture so it’s easy to fix in Lightroom. The bad thing is that CA appear in the bohek (which sucks) as well so if the blurry element is in front of your subject in focus, it becomes magnified. And even otherwise, it doesn’t change the fact that on JPEG, there will be information that will be forever lost compared to a lens that doesn’t have chromatic aberrations.

Being a Nikkor lens, this lens has a solid build and the lens doesn’t creep at all. The lens is big too and has the same size as the new 18–200mm. It looks proportional when it’s on a prosumer body and the design is very sexy.

For a 5x lens, the physical distance by which this lens extends out is surprisingly short. Optically, this lens is ok but the Sigma 17–70mm at two thirds of the price is sharper. The focus ring is very loose, ie the resistance is very low when spinning it. With M/A mode, you can manually focus after it finishes focusing automatically by simply spinning the focus ring. It is not a all-purpose lens but can do well as a medium-telephoto on a DX camera and especially for its price. The minimum focus is too long to use it as a macro.

The metering on this Nikkor lens is far superior to my other Sigma lenses. It is accurate all the time and is a huge time saver for not needing to do all the fiddling with exposure compensations when shooting A or S. In conclusion, this lens has the best mechanical design but produces the softest image of all my lenses.