Click here for my first impressions of this lens

Whew…it’s been awhile since my last lens review—I’ll admit to that! The rigors of school this past semester have just been too much to handle when combined with the upkeep of personal photography and this website. Even on this short break of mine, sports assignments and a faulty internet connection do their best to keep me from posting new content. I do try to still find free time.

If you are unfamiliar with my review methods, please see this post first!

The 70-210mm f/4 E by Nikon is the last “consumer” zoom to be reviewed in my long journey of working with this series of lenses over the past months. As some readers may know, I have a general negative bias towards zoom lenses. This is not from an image quality standpoint (though prime lenses tend to perform better anyway)—rather, when artistry is taken into account. A photographer can easily get lazy with composition when all they have to do is zoom in and out with the lens rather than their feet. This is more true with the 70-210mm with its 3x zoom range compared to the 2x zoom range of the 70-150mm f/3.5 and 36-72mm f/3.5. Generally speaking, however, this lens is by all means a telephoto (especially on APS-C or smaller sensor-cameras), so its use still is limited.

Supposedly this lens’ optics were used in Nikon’s first autofocus telephoto zoom, the Nikon 70-210mm f/4 AF. Does this mean its performance was superb even by non-Series-E standards? Let’s take a look! Continue Reading