Yea iv been liking my 55-200 myself. I was comparing the 300 to mine and while mine doesnt have vr, it said that i can pretty much achieve the same distance by cropping. It also said the 55-200mm was cleaner through alot of the focal range compared to the 55-300mm. But yours looks just as clean as mine, although you do have a better camera too.
To be really honest, there's not a lot of difference between 200mm and 300mm anyway in terms of focal length. All of those shots you saw of the fireworks were shot at 55mm and the last one of the cat was shot at 165mm. The 300mm just gives a tiny bit of extra reach in some situations, but it's not a huge difference.
There's not a lot of difference in terms of image quality between the D3100 and the D3200 either, but it is my understanding that the 55-300 f/4.0-5.6 which I use is a slightly higher quality lens than the 55-200 f/40-5.6. It's got 'ED glass' in it which can reduce chromatic aberration (read about it here
http://www.nikon.com/products/sportoptics/how_to/guide/fieldscopes/choosing/choosing_03.htm) and I think the thread is bigger too (not sure if this is a major sign that it's a better quality lens though). I think your 55-200 is a 52mm thread, same as the kit lens, but my 55-300 is a 58mm, so there's more glass at least. They both have the same relatively same aperture range though.
I don't think the 55-200 will be any cleaner than the 55-300 throughout the focal range, but it all comes down to post processing (if you edit your images). The 55-300 produces some nice images and I'm sure the 55-200 does too.
Ehhh. I REALLY wanted this shot soooo bad I had to walk 3 miles round trip in the freezing cold to get it. However, because of the cold I kinda rushed it and it didnt turn out that well.
30 seconds, f/22, ISO 400 and alot of post noise reduction.
The reason I wanted to try shooting at f/22 as opposed to the 3.6 Iv been shooting at is because I wanted to see how it would turn out. Figured it would help keep the highlights from blowing up but all around it wasnt a good choice. I should have taken another shot at f/3.6 but it was too cold.
It looks fine to me. How much noise reduction did you do though? at ISO 400 and 30 seconds you should have probably been alright. I took my first long exposure of a dual-carriageway road at ISO 400 and had a 30 second exposure, but I shot it at f/13. Not sure if the different aperture may have made a difference or not, but I didn't need to do any noise reduction and the shot came out quite well:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonbrown2013/8347376750/in/set-72157632572902319
I did this one in August at twilight because the light was a bit nicer. Shot at ISO 200, 30 second exposure and used f/10 (well, to tell the truth, I used Shutter Priority and it set for the aperture for me.
). Didn't need to do any noise reduction on this.
So, I've found using Shutter Priority and setting the shutter speed to 30 seconds will help. Apertures in the f/10-15 range have worked for me, so maybe try that next time?
Did you increase the exposure compensation in post production at all. Because if you bring it up several stops in post production then you may get some noise creep in. When I do these shots, I always use live view and set the exposure compensation to roughly what it needs to be on the camera to avoid having to increase or decrease it too much in Lightroom.
Hope that kind of helps...
