March 2013

For twelve years Nikon’s entry in the long end of the telephoto zoom market has been its aging 80-400mm model. In 2001, when Moose Peterson and I shot a dozen of the photos for our book on The D1 Generation of cameras with it, the lens was pretty cool. It worked well with DX sensors, had this amazing new thing called VR, and autofocused. Twelve years later it is a non-starter. Finally Nikon has done something about it, announcing a radically overhauled version, the Nikon “FX-format” 80-400mm lens, the Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 80-400m f/4.5-5.6G ED VR Lens. It isn’t any wider as far as aperture, being f/4.5-5.6, but it is guaranteed to have improved focus, optics, and VR.