I would recommend this lens to wildlife shooters working with decent lighting conditions. It probably isn't great for indoor low light sports. It is a big and fairly heavy lens, and may be easier to handle with a monopod. All of the photos I have attached were shot handheld. I have been using the tripod mount as a handle to carry the lens with the camera attached, but you can save a little bit of weight if you remove the mount. The lens has compromises, but is a good value when on sale... 5 stars for value, since I knew the limitations before purchasing.

A fantastic lens. Perfect condition, just like new. Seller described product perfectly. Fast shipping and very well packaged. Would definitely buy from again.

I spent a long time deciding if I should purchase this. To read the specs of this lens, this was exactly what I needed. Some negative aspects that took a long time to get past. I finally decided the lens was what I needed I took it on a 4 day shoot, took thousands of pictures. If you read the rest of the reviews, they are pretty close. With that said, is this the perfect lens. NO. Most of my lenses are faster. I had a learning curve to power through. I knew purchasing this, I would need to get used to using this. Work with it before you go. Autofocus is a little slow. Not bad but since I use faster lenses, I noticed. Take your time and make sure you are focused on exactly what you want. The pictures are top of the line from 200 to 500. I found no weak area.

Again Nikon killed it. I shot for hours hand held and the pictures are perfect. It did wear my arms down. Now if you are thinking the camera is not fast enough for you, I am a wildlife photographer. The conditions are perfect about one percent of the time. This lens did just as well as any of my other lenses could have done. Speed might have cost me a few shots, but not a huge deal. Impressed on how close I could focus at 200mm. But it is 200mm. You need a second camera for closer work.

Overall, this is an awesome lens. I watched one review where the presenter said if you do not have perfect shots, it is not the lenses fault. I have to agree with him. This lens is capable if you learn to be proficient with it. I like staying inside the range of my 200mm, but not all the critters agree. I do not give up quality with this at a farther distance. Very happy with my purchase. Not a point and shoot. Takes effort. I left out a lot of the fine details because I thought others were very accurate on the lens reviews. Buy it.

Quality build. Good value when on sale. If you hand hold be prepared for a work out. Picture quality is excellent. Great shutter speed to catch the action. Was going to return it but new I would not find anything better.

I've been researching telephoto zooms here for a while as I was trying to decide which one to get. I narrowed it down to the Tamron 150-600, Sigma 150-600 and this lens the Nikon 200-500. After reading/watching a bunch of reviews and comparisons of the lenses I decided to go with the Nikon, mainly because of it's sharpness throughout all focal lengths but also because of it's incredible VR (Vibration Reduction). Apart from being a great quality lens it's also affordable. For what you are getting it's a steal! Compared the it's Big Brother the Nikon 500m f4 Prime it's about 9 grand less and produces just about the same amazing quality. The lens itself is fairly new, it was released in 2015 I believe and because of that there isn't a whole of info out there like there is for other lenses. As of writing this review there is still no DXO Mark score which really bothers me, but hopefully they will get it up at some point.

The real beauty of this lens is it's VR, it's Nikons latest generation of Vibration Reduction and it's incredible! It's really quite amazing how low you can drop the shutter speeds. I posted some pics with my review that hopefully help give some ideas as to what to expect with this lens. One of the pics was taken at 1/8th a second at 500mm handheld, that's just insane! Obviously you wouldn't want to be shooting at that speed if you don't have to, I just wanted to test the capabilities. At 1/8th I couldn't land a super tack sharp pic, but scaled down to any reasonable size it then looks totally sharp. In general I was able to land tack sharp images at 1/25h and lower, and 1/100 to 1/300 gave me super sharp images almost every time, even at 500mm focus. The bokeh on this thing is impeccable, blowing out the backgrounds is a snap with this lens. Colors are also deep and saturated with good contrast. Chromatic Aberration isn't a problem either, however I've noticed a very slight hint of CA on a few images, though I am talking about a very minimal amount, if you weren't pixel peeping you would never see it, and even then you might still might miss it.

I received the lens is prefect condition.

All in all I would say this is one of the best telephoto zooms to date, if not the best if you take the price into consideration. This is about as good as it gets at this price range, you really won't find a better lens. It's extremely versatile, you can focus close enough to take some macro shots as well (a few included in my review), you can use this lens for tight portraits, candid shots, birding, macro, and even landscapes to a lesser extent.

If you want to do serious wildlife photography, "big glass" is inevitable. But the price of a 500mm or 600mm prime lens can set you back half the price of a new car! The Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6 E ED VR is a serious prosumer "budget" solution for those who can't justify such a massive cash setback - and even for many who could.