Nikon 18 - 200 VR bokeh and general thoughts?

tmnt

tmnt

King of Australia
I have the 18 - 135 kit lense but it's too short so at least the 18 - 200 will get me out of trouble a lot more.

Is the bokeh any good on this lense?

I've been looking at other walkaround zooms but keep coming back to this one. Are there any other great walkaround lenses with stabilization?

Ian
 
The 18-200 is a great walk around lens, and really enables you to just throw your camera around your neck and not have to worry about having a bag of glass with you. The VR in the lens works great and even though the lens is soft around 200mm you will really enjoy shooting with it.

That being said, the 18-200 is NOT pro glass. I don't know what you have been shooting with so far, but the 18-200 just does not have the contrast of some other lenses and if you are planning on printing out of it you will need to edit the images in post because they are just not that sharp.

I personally also think it is over priced, but for general walk around and point and shootyou really cannot find a better or more versatile lens.
 
Thanks Jeremy, I only have the kit 18 - 135 at the moment and a manual 100mm nikon 2.8 Series E which I'm just mucking around with today.

I do like to play in post a lot so that's not too much of a problem but like you said, it really does seem over priced. It's more than double the price of lenses in the (somewhat) same range which is a pretty big jump.
 
I just got an 18-200 to replace my 18-120 kit lens. I have to say I am really digging it. I was fretting dropping the cash, but it looks like I made a good investment. My main thing was having a zoom lens that could catch a reasonably sharp image in lower light situations without a tripod. The first thing I did was take a snap of a painting in my house at a shutter 30, F5.4, ASA400 in extremely low light. I was amazed at the sharpness and clarity I got from a hand held snap - at 30!

I know it's not a pro lens, but I don't know anybody that shoots digital that doesn't tinker with the image in their flavor of computer program (Lightroom/PS for me).

Anyway, this is a great lens. The Bokeh is about on par for a zoom lens, not amazing to me... if I were to do headshots, or want a really nice limited DOF with good bokeh I'd stick to my nikkor 1.8 85mm prime. I think there are some things primes can do that zooms just can't. So that is my travel kit now, the 18-200mm and an 85mm prime (which is closer to 120mm digitally), that and my trust SB-800).
 
I think it's pretty good...

p558309207-4.jpg
 
I think that Jeremy summed it up. Not pro glass but will be great for walking around with a great all-around lens.

One of the problems that I see reported on it is the lens "creep" effect. To solve this, people were locking the lens down with rubber bands, etc....
 
Works well for me on a D80; but I am not a pro at this by a long stretch.

bokeh1.jpg

ISO 200, 60mm, f5.0, 1/60 sec., RAW, highly cropped. Focused on the bricks about 18 inches from lens. The bright light and green bar are street lamp and sign about 50 ft and other lights are on homes about 200 ft away. Used auto, VR on.

bokeh3.jpg

ISO 200, 75mm, f5.3, 1/60 sec, VR on, from RAW, highly cropped. About 3 foot from subject, background about 12 feet behind subject.

I have not experienced lens creep. Big difference between VR on and off, love the VR on this lens. For an amateur like me it is a very nice lens, expensive, but replaces several lens for everyday walk around shooting as others have said.
 
whachusay said:
One of the problems that I see reported on it is the lens "creep" effect. To solve this, people were locking the lens down with rubber bands, etc....
Click to expand...

I've had that happen too, but to be honest, people blow it way out of proportion. It's really no more than a minor annoyance. People just need something to complain about.
 
I ended up selling mine after I got the D3. I found the lens creep really annoying when I tried to shoot anything pointing down.
 
bgundu said:
I ended up selling mine after I got the D3. I found the lens creep really annoying when I tried to shoot anything pointing down.
Click to expand...

That's never happened to me. It only creeps when I walk with it, and that happens with other zoom lenses I've as well.
 
I'd forgotten about this thread. Thanks guys I think I'll take the plunge before too long and keep my 100mm E series too for portraits (too long?). I know the creep on the 18 -200 will bug me but I'll use rubber bands of something.

Anything else to add?
 
If you are asking about bokeh specifically then any zoom lens isn't going to have great bokeh relative to prime lenses. Just by using the picture above as an example you can see that the shutter blades aren't defined (kinda ovaly) and there is a rotation motion in the upper part of the image caused by optical vignetting. To me the pciture looks great but I could imagine that if I see this throughout all my pictures I would get sick of that look.
 
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