Thought I'd re-visit this thread with my opinion and a few of my shots so far.....
As far as the lens goes I have absolutely no complaints. It focuses as fast as any lens I have seen. If the Nikon one is faster there can't be much in it. Focus is dead silent, not one bit of noise. It's big n heavy as any 70-200mm f2.8 with image stabilisation is. I find it more than acceptable to use from wide open. So far I have seen no CA. PF or other distortion to speak of (unlike my Pentax primes). Looking through my photos I don't have a great deal to show, but that is more due to the fact most of my shooting is in the focal ranges <50mm. But for some of the corporate and industrial stuff I have done so far, that I cannot show due to it being in a future publication, it has been an amazing work horse.
Wide open at f2.8
Matt and Renee by Crew One Photography, on Flickr
Matt and Renee by Crew One Photography, on Flickr
This was a test of the lenses sharpness and the cropping power of the D810. Moon shot handheld at 200mm, f5.6 and then cropped from 36mp down to 1/2mp. Still looks pretty good to me. Obviously a longer lens will do this better.
Moon by Crew One Photography, on Flickr
Obviously good at portraits. Both at f4.
Ella by Crew One Photography, on Flickr
Ella by Crew One Photography, on Flickr
I really can't think of any negatives from my experience so far. Yes it is big and heavy, but that is what these lenses are. It is no bigger or heavier than it's rivals. I haven't used any others to really provide a good comparison. From my understanding the Tamron and Nikon lenses have their zoom and focus rings around the opposite way to each other. If so, I think Tamron really nailed the ergonomics as I couldn't imagine having the zoom ring being the one closer to the body.
Considering you can buy this lens plus the Tamron 24-70mm f2.8 VC for the price of just the Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 VRii, and both are at least on par if not better than their Nikon equivalents.... Well to me the choice was obvious.
Forgot this one. One of the first shots I took with my new Nikon set up. Testing out the low light ability of the camera and the image stabilisation of the lens (still unsure how low I can safely go).
East Shores Park by Crew One Photography, on Flickr