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Cons: Uncorrected focus shift (spherical aberration) when stopping down on a D7100 or older, results in lots of blurry photos. Lackluster contrast wide open. Obvious coma wide open. Visible CA through the board. Strong vignetting at 16mm. Exorbitant price, even used. Not parfocal, very inaccurate distance scale.

Pros: Very sharp picture, not too slouchy on the frame edge either. Good color rendition. Impressive VR. Good against flare. Decent (but not great) AF speed. Excellent picture quality when stopping down by about 1EV.

Summary: It\'s a new staple of saving engineering and manufacturing cost with pre- and post-processing. Since this lens needs to be stopped down to produce excellent pictures but I shoot on a D7000 so it focus shifts, I had trouble getting any usable results at all. If used on a newer body it might actually be the non plus ultra for DX many people make it out to be, but on older bodies the frustration level is high and the lens is nowhere near worth the money.

Cons: - Slow and noisy AF, sometime misfocus - unpleasant bokeh - High distortion at all range - Weak against bright light - "3 pieces" design when zoom, slight wobbling of the lens barrel after using it few times. - Rear of the lens is not properly seals, you can see the circuit when you zoom to 80mm - Plastic everywhere - Expensive - pli

Pros: - Good image quality (compare with other mid range DX zoom) - Hardly any noticable aberration - Useful zoom range - Relatively large aperture - Have very good VR, effective and quiet - Allow full time manual override of the focus - Light and small

Summary: For lens features, it is the best mid range zoom for DX user, useful zoom range, relatively large aperture, and VR. If you always post-processing your images (which I do) you can look past the serious distortion issue by correction in LR. However, the auto-focus performance and the bokeh is the deal breaker. The unreliable auto focus performance has cause me few event photos, which will ruin your image and can never be salvaged. Speaking of out of focus, the bokeh from this lens is lousy, distracting, and is not pleasant. To compare, Nikon 70-300mm VR has better bokeh @70mm F/4.5 than this lens @80mm F/4.0, with two times the MSRP, what a shame.

Cons: I see some barrel distortion at 16mm - maybe 3-4%. Pretty typical for almost all 16mm lenses out there and ALL wide angle zooms. At 80mm there is also a very small amount of pin cushion distortion - certainly less than 1%. There is also some vignetting at 16mm. Using Adobe lens profiles in ACR both distortion and vignetting go away.

Pros: Still testing. However, this lens, so far, is nothing but amazing. I would say it might be one of the best DX lens Nikon has made to date - at least at the long end. At 10' the 80mm covers 2' x 3'. Some very slight pincushion distortion. Very slight. Easily corrected when ACR comes out with this particular lens correction data. There was a little CA in the corners, but ACR took care of it all. The resolution was stunning - right into the corners. From f5.6 to f11 it is almost impossible to separate center resolution from corner resolution. Even wide open at f4 the resolution was excellent. The sweet spot at 80mm? F5.6 and f11 . . . just as you would expect. I would rate resolution right up there with my Sony/Zeiss 55 f1.8 and the new Sony 90mm macro - maybe better! (yes, I had both and tested them both) Now I need to test 16mm and then distance landscapes. Quality control on my sample was excellent. The resolution was perfectly concentric - at least perfect enough that I couldn't determine a difference in my sample. Expensive? You bet! But, finally the DX gets some new pro glass! Best of all, we get a very useable range zoom that only weight 1 pound. And all this with VR and 4 elements of ED glass!

Summary: In terms of quality, flare, and resolution, this is the finest DX lens Nikon has made to date.