Nikon 70-300mm G lens - review

Nikon 70-300mm G lens - review What's up guys? I'm back and I'm here with a brand new series of videos I like to call the Cheap Escape Photographer Series. Required a lot of stuff recently for my photography and I just like to start reviewing a lot f it. Most of it added up, cost me less than a $100.00 with the exception of a couple things that would put it over that but let’s get into it here and this will be my first. I've had this lens for a while but I have yet to review it so I'm going to. This is the Nikon 70-300mm G lens Okay, here is how the lens would appear in its original packaging. It’s the standard gold Nikon box. You have the instructions. It’s a big fold-out poster-type thingy in seven different languages. Basically it’s completely useless. The only information you will ever need is right here on the front and possibly the diagram if you wanted to use that but basically this is all the information you need, there's no need for this crap. I keep it in case I want to resell the lens. They tend to sell for more when you have the original box and the original instructions so that’s why I keep it. Here’s the lens itself. First off, I’ll go into how it feels. It’s a plastic lens. You know, anyone that has the standard kit lens with the lower end, entry-level DSLRs like myself even, you're used to that plastic you feel. So you don’t have to worry about it, it is quality though. It’s polycarbonate, same stuff that stealth fighters are made out of so—it’s not like it’s cheap Chinese plastic, it is semi-decent quality. It has a plastic mount. Once again, plastic mounts, you know, everyone bashes them but you know, if you're careful with your equipment, it shouldn’t be an issue, so, and anyone says, you know I have metal, pro-quality glass, then you know you really shouldn’t be checking out this video, this isn't really for you then. Anyway back to the front of the lens, it has a 62-mm filter size. I have a filter on it right now, it actually came with the lens, the guy sent it with it. It comes with the hood, I don’t use hoods, I haven't needed them yet but I keep them just in case. As you can see, these lens here and here it is fully extended by focal length and now fully extended by manual focus. That makes it, with the hood, about a foot long, weighs about 15 ounces. So that’s the size of the lens. It’s not incredibly large, not incredibly small but I like it. As far as image quality that I have been able to get out of this lens, it’s really amazing. I am more than happy with this lens. I paid only $60.00 for this lens. It goes new for about $130.00 but you can get it on eBay for a little bit cheaper. I got it with the box and everything for $60.00 plus I think maybe $10.00 shipping, nothing more than $10.00 so I paid $70.00 in all for this lens and I'm supremely happy with it. It has delivered to me everything I need and more. So here’s some example shots. First up is a piece of sports photography, it is a baseball game and I did a little sequence with the batter swinging the bat and take a look at it. [Demonstration] Now one thing to note about that shot was I actually shot it through the fence, you know at a baseball field there is that fence around the back so that you know, stray foul balls or bad pitches do not hit the crowd in the back. I shot right through the fence with the fence actually in frame with the lens but because I was able to focus beyond that, you don’t see any of that at all. So it’s kind of cool. This second shot is from a David Cook concert that they had at my school. I was assigned to take pictures and I did and here is the result, I'm very happy with it, made the front page and I like it. So here’s a couple examples actually. [Demonstration] And finally an example of a macro shot that I used this lens for. This isn't a macro lens but because of its long, focal length, you can through the background out of focus so it works but it’s not the greatest but I like it so here you go. [Demonstration] Okay. final thoughts, do remember that this is the Cheap Escape Photographer Series and by that I mean that all the stuff is inexpensive of decent quality and personal choices by myself. So you know of course there are going to be those people out there that say, you now if you are cheap with your camera equipment, then you're only going to get cheap looking results and I'm just going to have to say to that that I completely disagree. You know not everyone can afford to buy the great lens and greatest, you know right away and some people have to buy the less expensive stuff to make do with it until they can afford to get that dream lens of theirs and that’s the case with me. I'm not willing to save up forever to buy a lens when I couldn’t be shooting right now with a lower quality lens and then someday get that high-quality class. So, that’s how I feel on that subject and I just want to prove to people that you can take good pictures with B+, we’ll call it B+ equipment. And so that’s that. I’ll show you guys the lens mounting. This is the exact setup that I had for the David Cook concert, actually for all of the photos. I didn’t shoot any of the photos with my D40. I shot them all with the D2h and this lens. And that’s it, and at the David Cook concert I had an ISO of I think 800, fully zoomed in for most of the shots, shutter speed was about 1/60th or maybe 1/30th, I can't quite remember what it was a couple months ago. But yeah, a couple things to know really quick, can't believe I forgot this earlier but not AFS lens so it will not focus with the D40, D40X or D60. And—it has a silent wave motor inside of it and this does not have that. So you must have, unless you want an auto-focus, or if you want it manually focused, you must have a camera with an auto-focus mode or inside the body itself. So anyway, that has been episode 1 of my Cheap Escape Photographer Series. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Look out for episode 2, it will be coming out in a couple of days as soon as I get everything around. So have a nice day.