Nature photographer's dream!

For the field photographer, this lens is a dream come true. Most of my macro photography features moving subjects, such as insects and flowers at high magnification. It's rare to find a lens that can handle auto-focus when working at this level, but incredibly this one can cope. The focus hunt is staggering (almost too fast when shooting distant subjects), and I have been able to track small insects walking directly towards the lens at 1:1. There is a 0.5m - infinity option on the lens to limit the range, though there is no option to work only in the macro range.
The VR is capable, although it does work better the further you focus, so for macro work you take your chances (although it can still help surprisingly well). Nikon do warn you about this in the manual, and if working at such close ranges, you will often want a tripod anyway.
The build quality is very robust, with metal casing and lens mount, and the focus ring has a very smooth operation. It is possible to override the autofocus during operation, even switching to macro without having to flip the relevant switch. There is a rubber gasket at the rear end to keep the internals of your camera safe from dust and moisture.
Backgrounds are poster smooth, even at high apertures. The glass is sharp (although not as crisp as the old non-VR model), and at 1:1 will reveal more detail than the naked eye. Even with the aperture wide-open, detail is crisp right to the edges of the image. The sharpest images are produced at the close range of the lens, but the chief design brief is as a macro lens, so I don't find this to be a problem. The lens is quite weighty, due to the Silent Wave focusing and VR servos, but still comfortable enough to use hand-held.
Because the lens is internal focus, the barrel length stays constant throughout the focal range (as opposed to barrel-extending lens types). This does mean that the effective f-stop number increases towards the macro end.The effective aperture number is different as it takes into account the amount of light lost within the lens. So in real terms, the lens has f/2.8 shutter speeds at infinity, but f/4.8 shutter speeds at 1:1 reproduction, although the depth of field is unaffected. For my purposes, this is not an issue, as I prefer not to worry about constantly adjusting my working distance during a shoot, but it can cause some confusion when trying to calculate depth of field, as the effective aperture number is displayed on the camera body rather than the actual aperture number.
All things considered, this is a highly versatile lens, and one I thoroughly recommend for natural history field-photographers.