I always take new images of every piece of gear I own for the insurance company along with the serial numbers and all that goes with it. Just for the heck of it, I've put all my glass in an album on my gallery as I do this. The point is to be able to point out things during a forum discussion.Sometimes it's hard to tell the size of a lens looking at the advertising or Nikon's catalogue especially when there's such a large difference zoomed in or out in this case. The shots are taken with a D700 and Nikon's 28 f/1.8G. Nothing special in composition. Just for examples of size.Here's the new Nikon 80-400 f/4.5-5.6 AFS VR zoomed in and out along with a nice Pelican crop from over the weekend. This pelican was the brightest one I've seen in a while. This was not punched up much in post, believe it or not.

Can you show a 100% crop of the pelican?  Looks a bit soft, but it may just be due to compression.Thanks!

coreyh wrote:Can you show a 100% crop of the pelican?  Looks a bit soft, but it may just be due to compression.Thanks!Nope. That's close to a 100% crop and I don't really believe in that much anyway. I compress jpegs heavy enough and any softness is my fault, though I don't really see it. I have never believed that a Jpeg on the web viewed mostly with uncallibrated 6 bit twisted neumatic LCD monitors tells much of anything whatsoever.

coreyh wrote:Can you show a 100% crop of the pelican?  Looks a bit soft, but it may just be due to compression.Thanks!Agree, looks a bit soft to me too.

Very impressive looking lens. Definitely the best pictures of the lens on a camera I have seen yet.Thanks for posting.

it must be our crappy lcd-s then....sorry but your reply to the pic looks soft was a real LOLbut wait mine is a 2550x1440 27" lcd that used to work okIMO my lcd shows me everything, good and bad, much more than any printnow back to our regularly scheduled show, i didn't think the pic looked soft

ralphcramdon wrote:it must be our crappy lcd-s then....sorry but your reply to the pic looks soft was a real LOLbut wait mine is a 2550x1440 27" lcd that used to work okIMO my lcd shows me everything, good and bad, much more than any printnow back to our regularly scheduled show, i didn't think the pic looked softThanks, the point was mostly to show the size of the lens, not so much the pelican. I appreciate your thoughts though.The point on the monitor is that the average 6 bit monitor color shifts as you move your head. Sharpness perception also changes with color shift unless you have an IPS or the like monitor. Secondly, the shot was pretty much a 100% crop, but again, thank you. I felt it was fairly sharp as well. I was more impressd by the coloration of the beastie.

I used the 85mm f/1.4 to test against the 70-200mm f2.8, and the 80-400 f/4.5-5.6 lens.  Took some test shots with D800.I found the handling to be the same, the 80-400 is fatter in body then the 70-200mm f/2.8. I did like holding the setup with the tripod handle on the 70-200mm, it felt balanced and handy with the D800.The 70-200mm was faster, brighter, sharper, excellent bokeh etc. I walked away convinced to get the 70-200mm f2.8.If I needed more reach, I guess the option of teleconverter is there. I suspect the lost would be about the same as f/4.5, perhaps a bit better.It appears to be of the quality of my Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8, in built, sharpness and it appears to be much better in Bokeh feature then the 24-700mm. The 70-200mm f/2.8 would be an excellent pair with the 24-70mm f/2.8.I also felt it would replace the primes 85mm and 105 f1.8. The 85mm f/1.4 may be an exception, especially if you need more light, otherwise it may replace that too.  That how good it was.Picture do show the size okay.  As regards the pelican, the Pelican body appears to be sharp, detailed to me, but I find the upper part, head, back of neck to be a bit blurred, maybe it was motion blur.penny is gone, so here my nickels worth.

Enlarge the upper head and neck. You'll see little translucent feathers are there.

This lens is sharp, great color, great contrast, has fast AF, VR is awesome, total winner.