Photo credit: Nikon

Here’s the rundown on this new glass:

Nano Crystal Coat

I have heard many Nikon shooters rave about how the ED coating does a great job of reducing ghosting and flare.

VR

Vibration Reduction helps stabilize the lens, reducing blur from hand shake (but not from moving subjects).

f/4

A constant minimum aperture of f/4 throughout the zoom range. It can also be closed down to f/32.

Focusing

Auto-focuses as close as 2m, manually focuses as close as 1.95m.

Head to Nikon’s page for this lens if you’re interested in the nitty gritty such as MTF charts and construction diagrams.

If you have not used one of these lenses before, it’s pretty big. With the hood and all, probably as long as your arm. A friend of mine owned one for a while, and he had a specific backpack just for this lens.

Differences from the original model

This is an update to the original 200-400mm lens. They’ve added the Nano Crystal Coating and improved the VR from a 3 stop advantage to now 4 stops. An AF/M mode has also been added and is intended to prevent the photographer from accidentally switching from AF to manual focus mode.

This is an FX lens.

Availability

The AF-S 200-400mm f/4 ED VR II is available for pre-order on Amazon for a cool $6,999 USD. It is not appearing in B&H’s catalog yet, but I will update this page when it does. Release is scheduled for late May.

On February 9^th Nikon announced a new lens aimed at their entry-level customers: the AF-S DX Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G. This is prime glass boasting a wide f/1.8 maximum aperture, small size & light weight and an attractive price tag.

Nikon’s new 35mm f/1.8 is an introductory fixed focal length lens aimed at owners of Nikon’s entry-level cameras (the D40, D60 & D90) who are looking to experiment with this sort of equipment. Its wide f/1.8 maximum aperture enables low light shooting without a flash and allows for a shallow depth of field to isolate subjects and produce soft out-of-focus backgrounds. Plus the lens’ small size and weight makes it very portable.

Nikon’s release of the 35mm f/1.8 DX is a throwback to the SLR film days in that its field of view on a cropped DX sensor is approximately equivalent to the “normal” 50mm lenses that are prevalent among 35mm and full frame shooters. A 50mm f/1.8 lens is available from Nikon, but its field of view becomes slightly telephoto with the DX format of these entry-level DSLR cameras ands its auto focus system is not compatible with every Nikon DSLR. You can read more about why Nikon thinks their entry level customers want a normal prime and why “DX is not dead” in “35mm F1.8 for DX? What is Nikon up to?” by Digital Photography Review (link via Benjamin Golub on FriendFeed).

Last but not least is the 35mm f/1.8 DX’s price tag — an attractive $260. Good glass gets very expensive very quickly, which has had the side effect of creating a large market for cheap fast primes like the “nifty fifty” 50mm f/1.8 lenses (which run under $100.00). By engineering the 35mm f/1.8 as an accessible consumer-grade lens instead of professional glass, Nikon should be able to capitalize on two photographic effects that a great many SLR shooters fall in love with at first sight: ambient light shots and shallow depth of field.