Review on 📷 Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-6.3G ED VR Lens for Nikon DSLR Cameras - AF-P DX NIKKOR by Toby Galbraith

I've had this lens for about 10 days now and have been shooting at least 7 hours out of 10 long hours with it. Camera bodies used with this lens are Nikon D5500 and D500. The build quality is there. acceptable for the lens, but the plastic flange is a serious drawback. I understand that the all-plastic construction saves weight, which is a pretty decent plus for this lens, by the way, but the mount savings just beg for trouble down the road. This lens's Vibration Reduction (VR) feature does a great job of smoothing out handshakes, but seems to add a bit of blur to images when left mounted on a tripod. The major downside is that there is no VR on/off switch on the lens, which becomes an issue when trying to track birds in flight with a high shutter speed in flight. This is an issue as VR doesn't appear to be set up for pan stabilization, which adds some blur when shooting while tracking a target. The VR controls are located in your Nikon camera's menu, but a firmware update may be required and even then not all cameras will be compatible with the lens. Using this lens with a non-Nikon compatible body is expected to keep VR always on. Autofocus (AF) speed/accuracy is ambiguous. For one thing, it's quick to focus and lock onto a target very quickly, and it wanders a lot less than other DX telephoto lenses I've used. In fact, I've only caught him hunting at night, and even then he still manages to concentrate most of the time. On the downside, the autofocus doesn't seem particularly accurate. The autofocus helps you get your target almost fully in focus, but when shooting fairly distant targets at 300mm I found it to be a bit off target. However, autofocus in video mode is a different story. Autofocus is a bit slower in live view, but the focus is so smooth you'd bet you're using a Canon camera and not a Nikon. It very rarely hunts and usually focuses on targets both near and far without the typical Nikon swinging focus that Nikon seems to be known for in live view. The stepper motors definitely do their job here, do it well, and I really like the organic looking video focusing. I also forgot to mention that it's much more accurate in live view for images, although focusing may be a bit slower. To be honest I could give this lens a solid 4.5 stars out of 5 if I could but for 2 brilliant releases. First chromatic aberration; The purple banding at 4.5 or 6.3 x 300mm is VERY noticeable, especially in bright scenes, and requires post-processing in Lightroom to fix. Even after applying a Nikon lens correction profile, in most cases you still need to spot correct magenta fringes. Second Vignetting; I initially noticed some vignetting in my shots and didn't think it was that bad until I applied the Nikon Lens Correction Profile in Lightroom and saw that the corners were brightened significantly. This isn't usually that important as it's much less annoying than chromatic aberration, apart from the fact that this lens was designed for VIDEO. That brings me to why I'm rating it 3 stars out of 5. And please make no mistake, my 3 out of 5 means I really LOVE the lens, but I also acknowledge its issues. Video post-processing to fix issues with this lens is done manually in video editing programs and attempts to remove purple fringing and vignetting with every shot. The lens is also slightly less sharp than the AF-S DX Nikkor 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED VR at the same price, meaning you won't be able to crop as much in a photo while maintaining maximum image quality . So tl:dr what I like about the lens: Fast focusing, real-time focusing looks/feels organic, you can manually focus the lens during autofocus (a huge plus), the focus ring is buttery smooth and VR takes picture/ video in hand is a pleasure. doesn't seem as accurate as fast at longer focal lengths, severe chromatic aberration in bright scenes (especially at 300mm aperture), vignetting on the DX lens (first one I've used with it) and it's not as sharp as a lens while that's worse in autofocus but costs the same (55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED VR also has no chromatic aberration and vignetting AND has a metal flange. Honestly if they glued a focus ring, stepper motors and VR from AF-P 70-300mm to DX 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED VR this would be a near perfect lens.