Last Friday I got my long desired AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G IF-ED.

Let me share my first experiences with this exceptional lens. However, don’t expect a professional review from me. For that matter I suggest referring to the links in my related post or directly to Björn Rorslett’s full review. I just put here the first series of my shots with this exceptional lens.

The lens is heavy and when attached to my Nikon D80 they do not really balance. I have to hold the lens rather than the body. I should buy at least a D200 for the balance I suppose :-). And a new bag of course, because my Lowepro Slingshot 100 AW suddenly became too small.

My elder son Balázs came with me for the first shooting. He is an amazing model, his attention can be fixed for long time by many things such as football players or wakeboarders this time. And he’s handsome too :-).

I think the bokeh - the blur of the out-of-focus area - at F2.8 is really beautiful, just as expected. Silky-smooth, as Björn wrote. I was surprised that a portrait can be shot with 2.8. I am sure it’s not a perfect one and I should have stopped down a bit for good portraiture, but I tend to like it this way.

Wakeboarders

When shooting the wakeboarders below against the Sun it was really a fun to follow them with half-way-pressed release button and auto-focus set to continuous. The auto-focus was working like a charm.

I tried to shoot some more interesting close-ups as well. I had to be very careful with the really shallow depth of field when using longer focal length. At 200mm even aperture set to 13 was not able to give an all-around sharp helmet with less than 30cm diameter.

To my sorrow I missed the small dog in the guy’s bag on the next one. It would’ve soften the hard looking macho quite a lot.

Showing movement this glass can be used just like others: with longer exposure time, but with the great advantage of the vibration reduction (VR) that eliminates the hand-shake-blur caused by the new-toy-excitement.

Let me finish with this picture with the sense of the setting Sun.

All-together this lens is a great piece of glass and I am not sure I deserve it.