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Is there a "Serious" review on the 18-55 VR?


shuo_zhao

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<p>Hi everyone, I've been looking for a good review on the 18-55 VR lens around for a whole. It seems that other than than the rather brief Dpreview review and the "questionable at best" KR review, no other serious reviews on this lens exists. Photozone.de lacks one, and the same goes with both Bjorn Rorslett and Thom Hogan.</p>

<p>The lens features a very different optical design than the original: it lacks the ED element, has quite a few more e lements configured in a completely new arrangement, and its MTF diagram looks different than the 18-55 II DX's. I think i t's reasonable to say that this lens might not behave like a old 18-55 with VR.</p>

<p>So where can I find a good review on this? And if you've used it, how is it?</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

 

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<p>I guess from a marketing stand point there is no real reason to do a review on a standard kit lens. It is a lens that most people are stuck with when they buy a kit. This is a lens that most people like to "discard" to upgrade to a better lens. This is a lens that is very inexpensive both as new and as used so the ownership is not as "painful".<br>

I personally like the 18-55 kit lens when I bought it with the Nikon D60 as a kit. It gave me great image quality albeit a little slow. I would have hung onto it if I didn't sell my D60 as a kit.</p>

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<p>I actually start to like the idea of using simple kit lenses. Aside from the better built quality, consumers seem to have paid mostly for the long zoom ranges (instead of a serious "jump" in optical quality) when purchasing mid-grade lenses. Of course the gold-ringed lenses seem to "work much better" in practice: can take a beating, withstand bad weather, fast AF, sharp, good bokeh, and etc.</p>

<p>Anyway, the old 18-55's design was very simple; it had only 7 elements (1 ED). It had some CA problems, and obvious but simple to fix barrel distrotion at 18mm. Not sure how would the VR lens behave, relative to the old one....</p>

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<p>I own both the VR and the Non VR version. The Non VR came with my D40 and I liked it so much that I purchased the VR version for My D90. I can not see a difference in the two lenses in real world shooting. I do not believe in alot of the "serious reviews" since they all use differing pseudo-scientific standards and tend to conflict with each other. I like just taking the lens outside and shooting some trees then doing a 100% crop and judging for yourself. If you would like I can provide some tripod shots of one or both if you do not have access to one of the two to shoot.</p>
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<p>Thanks for the link Rene.</p>

<p>John you made a good point. Honestly speaking, from a different perspective, there's probably no other lens that has the same kind of price-performance ratio with the same FL coverage as the 18-55 VR. Although it loses the ED element, I assume there's a legitimate reason for it; and perhaps the same goes with the includion of multiple extra elements...</p>

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<p>rotating front element makes it difficult to impossible to use with a polarizer. And the manual-focusing is HORRIBLE on it.</p>

<p>That kills it for me right there, that and I will NOT buy a lens with a plastic mount.</p>

<p>That said, if you are not going to use a polarizer and don't like or need to focus manually, it's probably a great lens.</p>

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<p>I use one with a polarizer frequently. Most of the time, I pre-focus, tweak the pola screen, and fire away. When shooting rapidly, I hold the shade gently with my left hand, let the front rotate to focus, and the pola stays where I want it. No big thing.</p>

<p>I've manually focused it a few times, which I would call rudimentary, but hardly traumatic.</p>

<p>The plastic mount works well, too. It's quite useful as an ultra-light weight , first class walk-around, strong-light (or tripod-ed) lens. I think of it (along with my old, trusty 45/2.8GN) as the Nikon-Barnack lens. I own close to 2 dozen Nikkors. Image quality wise, unbelievable as it might seem, this much-maligned optic is among the best. I got one with my wife's D80, when she "upgraded" right off the bat, leaving it unused. I know, heresy, but it's one of my favorite lenses.</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>"That kills it for me right there, that and I will NOT buy a lens with a plastic mount."</p>

<p>--that seems to be an odd stance to take. If a plastic mount got broken or stripped it would be seem to be simple and cheap to unscrew it and replace it.<br>

If a metal mount were to go it would take the whole lens with it. I can see the metal mount still attached to the camera with the body of the lens in splinters and shards!</p>

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<p>"That kills it for me right there, that and I will NOT buy a lens with a plastic mount."</p>

<p>--that seems to be an odd stance to take. If a plastic mount got broken or stripped it would be seem to be simple and cheap to unscrew it and replace it.<br>

If a metal mount were to go it would take the whole lens with it. I can see the metal mount still attached to the camera with the body of the lens in splinters and shards!</p>

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