Nikon 300mm f/4D AF-S Review

Lens Sharpness, Contrast and Color Rendition

Just like its big and expensive super-telephoto lenses, the Nikon 300mm f/4D AF-S is designed to be shot wide open. Most lenses are best stopped down to f/5.6-f/8 range to give consistently good pictures, while this lens is very sharp at f/4. Couple it with a 1.4x TC and you will have 420mm on a full-frame sensor and an equivalent of a 630mm in field of view on an APS-C sensor camera like Nikon D7100. The Nikon 300mm f/4 + 1.4x TC is great for shooting wide open (becomes an f/5.6 lens with the TC) and provides even better results when stopped down to f/8.

Below is some data compiled by Imatest to measure the MTF performance of the lens:

As you can see from the above chart, the lens provides excellent resolution at its maximum aperture of f/4, with very sharp center / mid-frame performance and slightly worse corners. Stopping down the lens does not do much to improve performance and the sweet spot seems to be at around f/5.6. If you want to compare the lens performance to other lenses like Nikon 80-400mm, see the Lens Comparisons section of this review.

With its minimum focus distance of 1.45m, the lens is also excellent for macro work, especially when attaching a close-up filter like Canon 500D. If you want to decrease the minimum focus distance of the 300mm f/4.0, then the Canon 500D is currently the only way to go (500D will decrease the minimum focal distance to 0.9 meters, approximately down to 1.1x ratio).

Here is a sample macro shot without a close-up filter (300mm f/4 @ f/8.0, 1/500 sec, handheld):

Color rendition is superb – although there is no Nano coating on this lens, I love the way the 300mm f/4 reproduces colors.

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Teleconverter Compatibility and Performance

The Nikon 300mm f/4D AF-S is compatible with all current and older Nikon teleconverters. So far I have mentioned the Nikon TC-14E II (which pretty much stays glued to my 300mm f/4), but both the TC-17E II and the TC-20E III teleconverters will also physically attach to the lens. However, it does not mean that you can effectively use the lens with all three teleconverters. In my experience, the lens suffers quite a bit when using anything other than 1.4x teleconverters. Some people are quite happy with the TC-17E II, which makes the 300mm f/4 a 510mm f/6.3 lens, but I personally have not had great success with this combo. The newer DSLRs such as Nikon D7100, D800 and D4 with the “Advanced Multi-CAM 3500” AF module certainly work better with this combo, however, I am still not very happy with the wide-open performance of the lens. Stopped down to f/8, the combo can produce pretty good results, but AF accuracy certainly suffers and you have to watch out for camera shake (keep that shutter speed high). Forget about using the TC-20E II or III (2x) teleconverters with this lens – there is too much loss of IQ with this combo.

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Here is a teleconverter compatibility chart for the Nikon 300mm f/4D AF-S:

Bokeh

Bokeh on the Nikkor 300mm f/4 AF-S is superb, I would say very comparable to bokeh produced by professional f/4 lenses. Thanks to the focal length of the lens, you can easily isolate subjects from the background, as long as the subject is relatively close, as shown in the below example:

Many telephoto lenses are capable of producing similar results, but this is not a demonstration of the bokeh capability of the lens. The terms “Bokeh” and “Depth of Field” often bring too much confusion to photographers, so I wanted to quickly point out the difference here. What you see in the above photo is subject isolation due to long focal length, large aperture, relatively close camera to subject distance and relatively far subject to background distance. Essentially, the way the background is rendered above has to do with depth of field much more than the bokeh rendering capability of the lens. So in this regard, the Nikon 300mm f/4 is no different than any other telephoto lens – it can effectively isolate subjects and throw the background completely out of focus, as many of the image samples in this review illustrate.

However, the bokeh rendering capability of the lens is a different subject, and that’s the strength of the Nikon 300mm f/4D as well. The lens renders background highlights very smoothly, with no noticeable outlines or busy shapes. The 9-blade diaphragm also helps in making bokeh shapes circular at large apertures. Take a look at the bokeh on this image (captured with the Nikon 300mm f/4D AF-S + TC-14E II teleconverter):

As you can see from this and other samples in this review, the lens does an excellent job in rendering bokeh, even when stopped down.

Vignetting

Vignetting levels on the Nikon 300mm f/4 AF-S are controlled quite well. At maximum aperture, there is a little bit of darkening towards the corners. If vignetting bothers you, you can easily fix it in Lightroom via the Lens Correction module. Both the latest version of Lightroom 4 and the current version 5 have full support for this lens.

Here is how Imatest shows the vignetting levels from center to corner at f/4 (highest amount of vignetting):

There is about a 1.2 stop difference between the darkest extreme corners and the center of the frame. As you stop down the lens to f/5.6 and smaller, vignetting decreases significantly.

Ghosting and Flare

All telephoto lenses, including the Nikon 300mm f/4 are prone to serious ghosting and flare issues. There is a reason why Nikon supplied the built-in hood with this lens, so I recommend to always use it extended. If you point the lens at a very bright source of light, you will see a lot of color changes, loss of contrast and other issues. Hence, try not to point the lens at the sun – it is not good for your eyes anyway with so much magnification.

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Distortion

As expected from a quality telephoto lens, distortion on the Nikon 300mm f/4D AF-S is practically non-existent (Imatest measured barrel distortion at just -0.51). Adding teleconverters does not change this behavior, so you should be safe from having to correct anything in post-production. If you use the Lens Correction feature in Lightroom, you will see that there is very little change when Lightroom attempts to fix distortion.

Chromatic Aberration

When it comes to lateral chromatic aberration, the lens handles it quite well, even in high-contrast situations. Here is how Imatest measured the chromatic aberration levels of the lens, without and without teleconverters:

As you can see, lateral chromatic aberrations are generally under 1 pixel, which is very good. With the TC-14E II and TC-17E II teleconverters, CA levels increase dramatically.

Next up, let’s take a look at how the 300mm f/4D compares to other popular telephoto lenses available today: