Every July I return to Alaska to photograph the amazing Coastal Brown (aka “Grizzly”) Bears. Over the course of 15 years I’ve used over a dozen different cameras, and at least that many lenses to capture images. Typically at least one of my lenses would be a massive telephoto (400mm f/2.8 or 200-400 f/4, or 120-300 f/2.8). This year, as part of my ongoing effort to identify lighter, less expensive alternatives to large and extremely expensive lenses, I decided to shoot for the entire two safaris with “just” a Nikon 80-400mm AF-S VR lens attached to my Nikon D610. My hope was to see whether this new, sub-$3K lens could do a good job of subbing for larger, more expensive alteratives….

One missing link in Nikon's Pro lens line has been the lack of VR on the mid-range and wide-angle zoom lenses. Certainly VR is not as important on these lenses as on longer focal lengths, but there are many conditions where hand-holding is the only option and a low shutter speed is the best option. Now with the new 16-35mm f/4 AF-S VR Nikon has addressed the shortcoming...The lens features include: