AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II

This lens may not be the greatest at any one thing, but it is very useful as a general purpose and travel partner. Overall performance is very good from macro to telephoto. sharp enough, middling fast, medium weight, it is a one lens solution to many photo opportunities. Some minor distortion at wide angles such as an ocean horizon line..Packed in a small bag it is fairly unobtrusive, avoids making your equipment a target for thieves.

There are hundreds of reviews of this lens by folks better equipped than I am to deal with technical minutiae. The bottom line is that there´s always a tradeoff to be made between zoom ratio and image quality. For my purposes, the usefulness of the zoom outweighs the minor flaws in image quality. There is one thing however, that I find incredibly annoying - when pointed down, the lens zooms out all by itself due to the weight of the moving parts. Nikon should have provided a bit more low-stiction friction so this doesn´t happen. This brings me to my non-recommendation. I *might* recommend it depending on the expected usage and with this one caveat, but that falls far short of ´´This is GREAT, BUY IT´´ that Nikon would probably have liked me to say.

Perfect lens for daytime photos in National Parks and any outdoor area with good light.
Great zoom range.

I use this lens when I dont want to keep changing from my 17-35 or 28-70 to a 70-200, this keeps the sensor clean and lightens the load I am carrying with me.

The zoom is too loose. It makes the lense zoom in when pointed downwards. The sharpness could shurely be improved.

The 18-200mm VRII is a great lens with a wide range zoom that replaces a bunch of separate lenses.

Pluses:
Very wide zoom range
Low geometric distortion
High build quality
A great lens to keep on your camera
Inexpensive for its performance.

Minuses:
A little larger and heavier that the standard lens. Make sure that you get a case that can handle it.
Shadows show taking closeup flash photos but can be avoided by using bounce flash.

All in all a great purchase!

Rob

You can handle most of the situations with this single lense. Some distortion at upper and lower limits.

I use this lens with my D90 about 85% of the time. I would like it to be faster (such as an f 3.5 all through the zoom) but the cost would be to great. On vacation, this lens just about does it all.

This is a terrific all around, go-to lens. It is on my camera most of the time. Great optics, terrific zoom range, vibration reduction, the works. Why not five stars? Simple. It comes down to two issues. One is vignetting if you are using a filter and zoom it out to 18mm. Using an ultra-thin filter nearly eliminates the problem. The other reason is depth of field capability. Because it is a fairly compact and reasonably priced piece of glass it lacks that wide open aperature that can give you a really shallow depth of field. All that said, I love this lens.

this lens has a good range for everyday shooting. close-ups are also very good. the biggest problem is drift. the zoom is very loose so when you have the lens pointed down it moves on it´s own i had this problem ´´fixed´´ but it still drifts. other than that it does well