For a long time I avoided the Nikkor 18-200mm VR lens after reading a few less than glowing reviews, but after Michael Mistretta told me he was happy with it and I saw several people using them at the last photo walk, I decided to get one. I find the quality to be very similar to the D90’s 18-105mm kit lens, which is an excellent general purpose lens.
In the past, I’ve missed several photo opportunities when I had the wrong lens on my camera and rushed to change it, only to find the subject was gone. With this lens, it should happen a lot less often.
The first thing I noticed when I got this lens is that it’s only slightly larger than the 18-105mm, although it’s quite noticeably heavier. Fully extended, it’s only a little less than an inch longer than the 18-105mm
This lens feels very solid & well made. Zoom action is very smooth with no slippage. Rather than the Auto & Manual focus modes of the 18-105mm, it has a M/A mode (auto focus with manual override), which lets you use auto focus and fine tune it using the focus ring.
As an example of the image quality, this shot was taken at 18mm.
This shot was taken from the same spot, zoomed in to 200mm on the purple flowers.
The 18-200mm VR seems to be a perfect lens for traveling or photo walks when you don’t want to carry extra lenses.
I've had this exact lens for a while, and it works well for me. Probably use this lens more often than any other – main complaint is the weight, does get heavy after carrying it around for a couple of hours.