AF Nikkor 70-300 (no VR, no AFS)

I finally decided to try this lense again. This was bought by my son a long time back and was so so on the D70. It is quite soft on the D3300, but in some situations when you need the reach it will do.



I tried to take close up of flowers, but two things were against me
- The closest focusing distance is nearly 6 feet
- This lense has no motor, so unlike the D70 and the D300, it is a MF on D3300. At close distance the DOF is very shallow so getting a tack sharp image (at close range) without tripod and live view is practically impossible.

Where I was able to get some where is in shooting birds. I could get between 10 and 20 feet before spooking them. Here are some bird shots. The flower shots are not worth showing.







The birds fill about 30% of the view. For comparison below are 100% crop view of birds taken with 18-55 at 55mm

I have that same lens I believe, and I had pretty much the same issues with it until I bought the D90 to use it on. The focus ring seemed very very short in rotation for manual focus, and made it extremely hard to get the focus just right. But with auto focus it gave me much better shots.
I think you did extremely well to get the great shots you posted! Way to go!

Thank you. Yes it focused beautifully on the D70. With D3300 it is MF. I think that years of practice with MF SLR has made my task with these lenses easier. Still as you can see on the 24MP sensor the 55mm kit lense looks better at same image size compared to this lense at 300mm.

Though I'm not very knowledgeable on the subject, I would think that the 70-300mm at 300mm gathers quite a bit less light. So I'm unsure if the comparison is fair. But others here are a lot smarter than I am, and may understand your comparison of these two very different lenses much better than I do.
I'm learning but it's slow going at times. Lol

aroy said:

Thank you. Yes it focused beautifully on the D70. With D3300 it is MF. I think that years of practice with MF SLR has made my task with these lenses easier. Still as you can see on the 24MP sensor the 55mm kit lense looks better at same image size compared to this lense at 300mm.

Click to expand...

I have this lens as well as a D70s and I understand where you're coming from. However, it's not that the lens focuses better on the D70, rather it's a matter of resolution. If you take one of your "soft" D3000 images and downsample it to equal the resolution of your D70, the image would suddenly look sharp again. My conclusion is the lens is not meant for these higher resolution cameras and you should consider replacing it with the newer VRII lens, if possible.

Dave_W said:

I have this lens as well as a D70s and I understand where you're coming from. However, it's not that the lens focuses better on the D70, rather it's a matter of resolution. If you take one of your "soft" D3000 images and downsample it to equal the resolution of your D70, the image would suddenly look sharp again. My conclusion is the lens is not meant for these higher resolution cameras and you should consider replacing it with the newer VRII lens, if possible.

Click to expand...

The lense is soft even on the D70, and I have no reason for using it on a 24MP sensor, apart from finding where it will work best. That lense, bought nearly 10 years ago is even today cheaper new than the 50mm F1.8d.

FOV at different focal lengths


300mm


200mm


135mm


100mm


70mm

Some shots at long end


Bird on a tree


My neighbour's white Hibiscus


Crop

What I have noticed is that this lense is to be used when nothing else is at hand. It has a few shortcomings
. Soft at 300
. Low microcontrast

. Purple fringing at edges
. The barrel rotates while zooming and focusing
. The manual focus is a pain as the focusing ring is very narrow

As shown in the previous posts, images at 300mm are not as sharp or bright as images at 55mm of the kit lense, when both are displayed at the same print size.

Difference in contrast


70-300 AF


18-55

Wow, very interesting comparison, thanks for posting.

I have the same 70-300. I have to say the softness at 300 mm really bugs the heck out of me. I know I need to just pay up for the Nikon 70-300 VR but have trouble justifying it when the cheap 70-300 gets the job done well enough for most shots. That lens is so weird in that you can back off the slightest bit to 200-250 mm and see a huge increase in sharpness. The other thing that really bothers me about it are the chromatic aberrations along white edges and lines. Again, I realize it's common in cheap lenses like this but it's still annoying particularly when taking pictures of birds with white sections of feathers.

For wildlife that moves, and fast, at the very least AFS is essential. VR helps quite a bit too, but most importantly Nikon updated the whole formula and quality with the VR version. What I've learned is that its ok to go real cheap on simple designs like short primes, but when things get complicated and zoomy, every extra $100 is noticeable.