It’s been years since I gave up my Canon gear and switched to Nikon and my Canon EF 70-300 IS was long gone. So the longest focusing lens I owned so far was Nikon 24-70 2.8 which is pretty amazing in terms of sharpness and picture quality but it’s still not a telephoto lens.I was still missing this longer focusing range especially during my trip to US while shooting wildlife , although I took Nikon 80-400 VR for rent I was not impressed with the sharpness and overall picture quality of it.
Till I finally got a hold of Nikon’s most brilliant zoom lens 70-200 2.8 VR II.

First thing you won’t miss is weight !!! 1.5kgs of it ! Mount it on D700 with battery grip and you end up with almost 3kgs in your hands. Heavy but when you loose with comfort of carrying it around you gain on stability while shooting. And when the Vibration Reduction kicks in well what else would you need ? right, some objects to shoot…
So I moved to the most crowded place in Prague the Charles Bridge to hunt down some people from a long distance and possibly some gulls to test the famous lightning fast focusing of the lens.
Ok here we go, some shots, very random, but it’s just a test..

I love the way it creams out the background, and the sharpness is just superb !
The way you can shoot from a long distance without anybody noticing makes you feel like a spy-paparazzi 🙂
Ooops… the girl in red just busted me ! 🙂

Ok enough of spying, let’s shoot some architecture…

So bottom line, I’m impressed with the sharpness and detail of the image, VR works great and I can’t imagine shooting handheld on 200mm without it.
Surprisingly there were no gulls or any birds around so I had no chance to test how quick the focusing is, but I hope next time I’ll make it.
It’s without a doubt a must have lens, it’s big and heavy but I don’t mind an extra weight, besides you can feel how solid and robust it is, for sure it will last for years.width=”1150″