Can anyone tell me whether above combination would give good results? I am interested to get this lens as a "walk about" combination together with the D800.

many thanks
Rene de heer

It will give as good of results as the lens and photographer are capable of. Not as good of a result as the camera is capable of.

I am always puzzled by these questions. In any lens and camera combination, if you ignore the photographer's capability, either the lens is the limiter or the camera is the limiter. Whichever of the two has the lower acutance, distortion, etc will limit the results you get. The 70-300, which did not limit the performance of the D700 will limit the performance of the D800 but since the lens could outresolve the D700 still means that you will record more information with the D800 than with the D700, just not as much as the D800 is capable of.

There is always something that is the limiter. With that combination it's the lens but that doesn't mean you won't get better results than you got with your previous camera.

I must be missing something. I wasn't puzzled at all by the question and I thought you gave a perfect answer. (as usual)

+1

I'm more puzzled by the fact that's EJ's puzzled than by the question

Perhaps bad choice of words but I'm puzzled that every time a new body comes out there are many questions that are basically the same "Is this lens any good on this camera?". If it was good on a previous camera, it will be at least as good on the new camera for the same output size. The answer is always the same, any lens or camera is as good as the weakest link. Since the lens in question here has out resolved all previous bodies, it's clearly going to be even better on a higher resolution camera but it will be limited if the new camera is higher resolution than the lens.

EJ, thanks for your response. What is wrong with asking whether the lens would perform well on a D800? To be honest: i am a photographing and don't spend time testing and scrutinising equipment like you do! I just want to make sure before i purchase this lens that it will perform in a decent way on a D800. Nothing more and nothing less.
Rene de Heer

OK, clearly my point was missed. My bad. The 70-300, since it limits the performance of the camera, is not a lens I would recommend purchasing specifically for use with the D800. On the other hand, if somebody already has this lens where it didn't limit the capability of the camera used before, it will still improve on what they had before, just not up to the capability of the D800. If you are buying new, do you really want to buy something that limits the capability of the camera since cameras are only going to get better with time and lenses usually outlive cameras.

I recently sold my 70-300 simply because it limited the performance of the camera and I would always choose the 70-200 VR2 or the 200-400 since both are significantly superior and dont limit what the camera is capable of.

But all of that aside, the vast majority of the time, the capability of the equipment is limited by the skill and technique of the photographer not the equipment.

EJ, thanks for that! Makes things very clear.....thanks again,
Rene