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Jared Polin, froknowsphoto.com.
And this is a side-by-side comparison between the brand new Nikon 70-200 2.8 E version versus
the older 70-200 2.8 VR II.
Now this is a more technical/scientific review that I am doing for this video.
It's not a real world review.
We will be doing one of those in the future.
So some of the tests I'm going to be conducting are shooting a brick wall.
I'd like to shoot a brick wall because that helps us show distortion, vignetting, sharpness
around the edges.
That stuff's really important then we have close focusing.
How close can you get with the lens and still get a picture at 200 millimeters.
Then we have focus breathing.
Now I'm not a big fan of talking about focus breathing, but I know a lot of people out
there want to know more about it and does the new lens, breathe as much as the old lens.
Well, it's not living, so it's not actually breathing, but we'll get to that test in just
a minute.
Also, how is the VR?
We'll test the VR for stills as well as the VR for video as well as Boca test, sniff test,
and of course, the wind tunnel test.
Don't forget you can download all of the full res.
export JPEGs over on the website as well as play with the raw DNG files, so you can pixel
peep to your heart's content.
Now let's look at the prices of these two lenses and what has changed.
Well, the old lens currently sells for $2,100 new.
Of course, you can get it for a little bit less used, but the major issue that a lot
of people have with the new Nikon 70-200 2.8 E is the fact that it is priced at, wait for
it, wait for it, $2,800.
That's right.
That is a lot of money.
Get out of here, money.
Move, move, move.
That's not actually real money or is it real money?
Is it worth $2,800?
Of course, we're going to show you the results and then you can decide if it's worth it for
yourself, but what has changed.
First off, the first major thing that has changed is they switched where the focus ring
goes and the zoom ring.
So now your zoom is all the way out at the end and the focus is closer to the camera.
Now what I will say is I wasn't happy with that at the beginning and I haven't done a
real world review just yet to really tell you if I like it or if it really doesn't matter
at all, but one thing I did notice is that the tripod collar on the newer lens is actually
a little shorter than on the old one.
So when you're resting your hand on the tripod collar, it actually doesn't feel that bad
for zooming whereas with the older lens, if you have the tripod collar on, it just feels
like it's jotting into your hand.
Now personally, I take the tripod collar off at all times when I'm shooting.
This is not a lens that you need to use a monopod for, you don't need a monopod.
You pretty much don't need the lens collar unless you're going to be shooting video or
putting it on a tripod.
In addition, you will find on the new lens are programmable focus buttons.
There's four of them going around the barrel of the lens.
Now what does this do?
Well, you can set it, so if you press it and hold it in it's going to actually act as your
auto focus or you could have it preset to change your focus point.
Now you could set it, check this out.
You could set your focus point say to the right-hand side of the frame when you're shooting
horizontal so that when you go vertical, you hit the button and the focus point will be
set to the top portion if you saved it there.
Now in theory, that sounds wonderful and great, in practicality, it actually sucks.
Why does it suck?
Because you have to hold the button in in order for it to stay there.
You should be able to press the button and have it stay up there.
At any point when I press that button, I want my focus point to go and stick to where it
is.
I wanted to go there and stay there.
Not press a button and then have it automatically go back when I release it.
The same thing happens say if I am on 9.
auto focus, I want to go to 72.
Well, I press the button, we'll, I have to hold the button in in order to have the 72.
I don't like that.
You should press it and it should stick and stay.
Now how is the balance in the hand?
The older lens feels more top heavy, front heavy like, it's going to fall out of your
hand.
The newer one is much better balanced in your hands and it is a quarter pounder with cheese
less heavy than the older one.
Now the older one feels a lot heavier, but that's because of the balance.
So Nikon did a great job with balancing this lens.
It does feel better in your hands.
So it does have a larger feel of a barrel, but maybe the lens elements inside are a little
larger thus the expenses, but that's just me giving a guess.
Now two other things.
The VR has changed.
You now have four stops of VR in the new lens where you only had three stops in the older.
Will that make a difference?
We will see in my test.
And E, the E is electromagnetic diaphragm.
Now we noticed in some of the shots and in some of the videos that we were doing that
with the new lens even with the same exposure as we shot with the old lens that it actually
seemed brighter and even the histogram told us this as well.
Now that may be because the electromagnetic diaphragm is actually a true representation
of two, eight, four, five, six, or whatever your F stops going to be whereas the older
one is more on the mechanical side and maybe it is just missing slightly.
Now that's me just saying that because theoretically with the same exposure, the same camera, the
same settings it should give you the same exposure, but we actually didn't see that.
It came out a little brighter with the newer lens.
One other thing is the FL.
That is your Florian or your fluoride or your fluorite lenses, you don't try, don't try
chewing on it, it's not going to help your teeth, but it will give you sharper images
at least in my opinion.
So now let's get into the more technical and scientific portion of this side-by-side comparison
and let's shoot the wall.
So I set up to shoot the wall both at 70 millimeters and 200 millimeters.
And the idea is to go from F2.8 all the way up to F22 just shooting at single stops.
Now the point of this is to try to see how it vignettes at 200 millimeters at 2.8, but
also at 70 millimeters to see if there's any distortion.
Something else that I'm looking for is how sharp it is in the middle as well as around
the edges.
So now when you put up images shot with both lenses, side-by-side at 200 millimeters at
F2.8, I'm looking for vignetting.
Now actually it looks like there's a little more vignetting on the newer lens.
It's ever so subtle compared to the older lens, but when you zoom in, one-to-one right
in the middle of the frame you instantly see how much more sharp contrasty and vibrant
the new lens is.
Now this is all with no corrections made.
It's the same white balance or the same settings and nothing else has changed.
You can also download these files to check these out for yourself, but you can see how
much sharper and clearer the new lens is compared to the older one right in the middle.
The older one looks like it's hazy.
It almost looks like you're shooting with a filter in front of it because it's not tack
sharp, and I know that it was in focus and it's also it just comes across more hazy and
less contrasty right off the rip, straight out of the camera.
Now when we move around to the edge of the frame at 200 millimeters, the new one is just
clear as day.
It is sharp, it is contrasty, that's what I look for in a lens, especially straight
out of the camera.
The old one, not so sharp around the edges and definitely not contrasty.
Another thing I wanted to see was at 200 millimeters, which one felt longer.
The old one or the new one?
Now ever so slightly the newer one feels like, it's a little longer at 200 millimeters than
the older one.
Now we set this up where I had the Nikon D5 on a tripod and all I changed was the lens.
That's how we tried to keep it as scientific and technical as possible.
So here's where it just seemed like, the newer lens give you a little bit more reach versus
the older one.
So when you go back to 70 millimeters, what am I looking for with this test?
I'm looking for distortion.
Now distortion's going to show up more so on your wider lenses and you won't really
see it as much on those telephoto lenses and both of these look pretty much the same.
So moving on from that test, I wanted to get to the close focusing test.
And what does that mean?
That is the closest that I could get to the subject and still have the auto focus lock
on.
Now because I was doing this test, I thought it would be a good opportunity to test out
the VR for handhold ability to shoot at slower shutter speeds as well as to give you something
with some Boca in the background that you could then pixel peep and say which Boca you
actually like.
So how did I do this test?
Well, first I started with the new 70-200 2.8 and that lets you get to 3.6 feet away
from your subject.
We'll just call it 31/2 for now.
So I got to within 31/2 feet of the bottle head, filled the frame all the way, shot it
at 1/20th of a second which is breaking all of the rules that you could ever think of
for shooting photos, and I got it tack sharp and filled the frame.
Now check this out.
When I did the same thing with the older lens, I could only get to 4.6 feet away, so the
newer lens gets you a foot closer.
So this is what it looks like when you shoot at 200 millimeters from 41/2 feet.
It is insane, right?
Look at this.
Look at the difference at 200 millimeters from the old lens to the new lens.
Obviously, you can get closer, which means you can fill the frame more 200 millimeters,
which means it's going to be better for portraits.
It's just going to be overall better.
It's more bang for your buck.
It just feels better.
Now in terms of VR, I wanted to push it even further with the new lens.
I wanted to see how far I could handhold it, how far I could take it and still get a sharp
image.
So what did I do?
I went to 1/2.5 of a second which is just under a 1/2 second.
If you think you can focus there, I didn't know I could do it.
Did I do it?
Yes.
So I set up to take this shot.
I put it on multiple frames a second because what you need to do is go click, click, click,
just hold the button down because at some point you're going to settle and get a good
shot.
It took three pictures.
Two of them showed a little bit of motion blur, but on the third one it was tack sharp.
You can see the eye shooter on the shirt is nice and sharp.
That's at 1/2.5 of a second just under a 1/2 second handheld shows you that the new VR
is absolutely incredible.
So moving on from the VR for handheld for stills how is the VR handheld for video?
You know, that you have three stops with the old lens and four stops with the new lens,
so how do we do this scientific technical test.
You can see the rig I used right here.
We put 2D 750s on the back of these lenses.
We set them to everything exactly the same focused in the same place, shot the sign and
you can clearly see that the new lens handles much better with VR when it comes to video.
It's almost like night and day.
Now, of course, you expect that with a newer lens, but that's the handheld test, just standing
there, moving around, you can see the difference between VR on and VR off.
It is pretty insane when you see the switches get flicked in live real time with video,
you have VR on and it makes such a world of difference, but how is the VR for when you
are moving or walking.
Well, it is much better on the new one as well.
You can see how much better it is.
How much more stable it is when you're walking with the new lenses VR than the old lenses
VR?
So that's something cool.
If you're shooting video, you will know that the VR is better when you're handholding it
in the new lens.
So here's a little subtle difference that some people that own the old lens will get.
Now when I used to try to change lenses and stand it up on the lens hood with the old
lens it would rock, it wouldn't stand still, it could almost fall over on its own whereas
the new lens they flattened out the top of the lens hood, so you can actually stand it
up to change your lens.
Now I know that subtle and small, but you don't know how many times I've tried to stand
up my lens on something flat and it just weebled wobbled and almost fell down or would fall
down on its own.
Now let's move on to focus breathing.
There's been a lot of talk lately about lenses having focus breathing.
How's the breathing?
I hope they fix the breathing to be honest with you.
It really doesn't matter for 99 percent of the photographers in the world.
Don't worry about miniscule things like focus breathing.
It's not going to affect your images.
Please stop over complicating the stuff and thinking that just because somebody said focus
breathing is an issue that it's actually an issue.
So I decided to do a technical test to show you focused breathing in the old lens and
the new lens and this is the new lens is focused breathing, you can see what's happening.
It's actually not moving very far, but when it comes to the older lens you can see the
difference between the two.
So it seems like there is more focus breathing in the older lens then there is in the newer
lens.
So all of you people who are worried about focus breathing, well, you can rest assured
and rest easy tonight knowing that the new $2,800 lens has corrected most of that focused
breathing.
And the final test and most important tests are these.
The wind tunnel test and the sniff test.
Let's see which lens wins.
So let's start with the sniff test.
The old lens smells like a quarter pounder with cheese.
And the new lens smells like Chick-fil-A waffle fries because who doesn't like Chick-fil-A
waffle fries.
I know I do.
Okay.
Wind tunnel test.
This is scientific.
There's a clear winner on the wind tunnel test and it's the old lens.
It actually has more ripples and ridges than the new lens.
So if you want to know which is better in the wind tunnel, it's the old one.
Should that make a difference in which one you buy?
Absolutely not.
So what it comes down to between these two lenses are, are you a fulltime working professional
who can afford the $2,800 or can you not.
It always comes down to money if you can afford the best of the best of the best with honors
which clearly is the newer lens.
Is there anything wrong with the older one?
Not really, but the newer one is that much better.
Am I happy that I had to spend $2,800 on this new lens instead of $2,299?
No.
I am not happy at all that I had to shell out more money than I should've had to shell
out, but the quality that's reflected in the new lens is great.
Based off of these scientific tests and technical tests, we will be doing a real world review
where I put it out into real world situations and then give you my thoughts there, but based
on the comparisons putting this side-by-side, the new lens is absolutely worth it if you
can afford it.
Now for clarification, I personally bought this lens and I own it.
So me doing a review is me doing a review just like I always would do so.
I want to remind you that you can download all of the full res export JPegs over on the
site as well as raw DNG files, so you can pixel peep to your heart's content and decide
for yourself which one is better.
Be sure to take a look at those files and let me know what you think in the comments
below.
Leave your comments.
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So also, let me know if you like this more technical/scientific type video and we will
make more of them along with the real world reviews in five minute portraits.
So thank you for your time.
Thank you for watching this.
That's it.
Jared Polin froknowsphoto.com.
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