Why didn’t anyone tell me…

I was actually writing this up for the photo mailing list at work, but thought it might be interesting to others here.

I have the 18-200 f/4.blah DX VR Nikkor, and while it’s a great one-lens-all-day lens, the images themselves are disappointing to me, requiring a trip through PTLens (or lensfix) to correct out the curves before I consider the images ready for consumption. The lens distorts much more than I like at both ends of the zoom range, and the subjects have to stay still too long to make it a good indoor lens. The middle ranges are passable to good, especially in bright light. The VR is quite good, but again the subjects have to be either very still, very well lit, or very far away for the image to be sharp, and that’s just not happening with the things I usually shoot. I’m seriously considering selling the lens or putting it on my wife’s D50 as I usually end up packing my 28-70 f2.8 and a wide angle zoom instead. What it did replace is my old full-frame 28-105 f/3.5-4.5, which was my favorite all-day lens before the VR. There are post-processing apps (lensfix and similar) that will correct out the distortion, but I’d rather capture it without if I can. Also note that I don’t do much in the telephoto range, where I expect an f/2.8 VR would be ideal. The VR has probably saved me a few shots that would otherwise have been lost, but I’m not absolutely sold on the lens because of the f/4+ rating.