gear

THE DIGITAL SOAPBOX OF ANDY CLEAVENGER

80-200mm f4.0 AIS

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Email:  graycard18@gmail.com

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Just bought this one recently, so I haven’t had a chance to use it extensively. It came highly recommended by some review I read on the internet somewhere. And since everything on the internet is obviously true I rushed right out and got me some of that.

OK, that’s not exactly how it happened.

In truth, I have been thinking about getting a smaller, lighter weight tele zoom to take on vacations for quite some time. I had been looking at a lot of the auto focus variable aperture models, however I’ve never liked the idea of variable aperture. Maybe it’s just my penchant for simplicity (read: laziness). Plus, I’ve been using all of my lenses in manual focus mode lately so I didn’t necessarily need it to be an auto focus lens.

So when I stumbled across a review for this lens I noticed the constant f4 aperture, the smaller size, lighter weight, and much cheaper price tag and decided to give it a try.

After shooting some tests with it I would say it’s nothing to write home about. I do notice some color fringing happening on the edges, however some recent reviews I’ve read of the D3 and D300 lead me to believe that Nikon has somehow figured out a way to fix fringing in camera, so if you’re more up to date on your DSLR technology than I am this may not be a problem for you. As far as I’m concerned it doesn’t suck (even on a D70), and it fits in the bag I’ll be taking with me this summer. That’s good enough for me.