Every now and again there comes a lens that bears a new feature for which there is no obvious demand and which seems to have been included either to trump another brand or to prove manufacturing prowess. Nikon’s new 70-200mm f/2.8 pro-spec zoom, with its three-mode focusing system, may be just such a lens.

Nikon’s lens is a tad uncomfortable to use owing to the extended height of its tripod-mounting pillar, which pushes the zoom ring just out of comfortable reach. This is exacerbated by the position of the zoom ring, which is a shade further forwards than would be ideal thanks to the fact that the four slider switches, which control the focusing and anti-blur settings, are located rearmost.

The extra height has been caused by a tripod-collar quick-release mechanism, which might be a boon for some users but merely introduced a little handling awkwardness for me. Similarly, the three-mode focusing slider, which adds an M/A mode to the usual A/M and M modes, is tricky to use. It’s easy enough to set pure MF by sliding the switch right back, or to set AF with full-time manual intervention by sliding the switch fully forward, but the middle position is rather hard to locate.

According to Nikon, A/M is AF-priority with manual intervention whereas M/A is AF with MF priority. Apparently, setting A/M makes the lens less sensitive to manual disturbances of the focusing ring (hence AF priority) but I could detect no significant difference between the two variants.

As is the norm, Nikon offers anti-blur settings that combat camera-shake in a specific direction that allows panning to be used (Normal Mode) and camera-shake in all directions (Active Mode). Nikon suggests that Normal mode will be appropriate in most situations.

Technical testing resulted in a perfect score for Nikon’s new lens: at no point did its MTF figures dip below, or even get close to, the critical 0.25 cycles-per-pixel level. In fact, as appears to be becoming the norm for Nikon lenses, the MTF curves are remarkably flat and tightly grouped. Canon’s equivalent lens achieves a higher peak resolution but Nikon’s lens is much more consistent and apertures can be selected without fear or favour.