This is an in-depth review of the new Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR lens that was released earlier this year along with the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G and Nikon 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G VR DX lenses. The lens was kindly provided by B&H – the largest photo reseller in the world that I use more than any other to buy my photography gear.

It is no secret that Nikon released the Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR lens largely due to the popular demand of the Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G VR DX. The large zoom range of the Nikon 18-200mm and its generally good performance made it a lens of choice for those, who wanted to have a good lightweight travel lens or only wanted to use one lens on their DSLR cameras. Despite the fact that the lens suffered from some serious issues such as lens creep, heavy distortion and sharpness issues beyond 105mm, some photographers and reviewers praised the 18-200mm so much, that the demand increased significantly, resulting in heavy lens shortages around the world. During this time, Nikon had a hard time keeping the lens on the shelves and the only way to obtain it was to either pay a premium and buy it from Ebay, or order and wait for months until Nikon sent another batch to retailers. I remember this period of time very well, since I had to wait for 3 months to get my copy of the lens. Ever since Nikon released the FX full-frame sensor, more and more photographers have been switching from DX to FX. Since Nikon 18-200mm is a DX lens, an FX camera would fall back to DX mode, giving less than half the resolution – a problematic situation for most photographers that use the current 12 megapixel cameras. Therefore, photographers that made the switch from cropped sensor cameras to full-frame, ended up selling or trading their DX lenses for the above reason, including the much loved Nikon 18-200mm.