|Date: 26-Mar-1999 21:30:47 | Can anyone give me some of their experience/knowledge in | regard to a Nikon 80-200 f2.8ED AF lens, | NB not the D series and also a Nikon 180 f2.8 ED AF lens. Sorry about the delay in answering but I'm finally getting my slides back from developing. I just bought the 180D F2.8EDIF AF lens. While you are not looking at the D lense my understanding is that the 180 lens "family" is the optically the same, the differences being the D chip and lens coatings on the newer products. I ended up getting the 180 instead of the 80-200 zoom for a bunch of different reasons.... - Slightly cheaper. Nice but not a big persuader. - Smaller. The 180 is an inch or so smaller in length. Helpful for my new camera bag. The zoom would have required an even larger bag which I don't want. - Lighter. The 180 is about half the weight of the zoom. Much more important to me. - Quality. The 180, from all of the information I could find, is slightly better than the zoom at the long end. This is more important to me. I have taken around 200 exposures with this lense in the last couple of weeks. About 70 exposures are back from developing, but its enough to make me very impressed with the lense. I have taken shots of moving animals in generally poor light which has caused me to expose the film with an aperature at 2.8 maybe getting to F8 on some shots. So far I cant see a difference between any of the exposures due to the lense. I'm looking at the slides on a PortaTrace 4 light table with a Zeiss 5x lupe. The film I have gotten back has been Ektachrome 100 and maybe a 200. There have been some shots where the zoom would have been easier to use. Did I lose a shot because I did not have the zoom? No, I just had to move back a bit to frame the subject correctly. I have also hand held the lense where the shutter speed was around 1/50 a second. Not all of the exposures worked because the peacock moved his head but there was not camera shake that I could see. BTW, I was sitting down in a very stable position, don't think I was standing up doing this! 8-) I don't know if'n I could have done the same thing with the zoom. Might have just not sure. I KNOW that I'm happier carrying the prime for a couple of hours vs the zoom. Ironically, I'm NOT that sensitive to the wieght of my camera gear but I did want to keep it as light as possible especially when the lense is in use. I'm use to carrying 60 pound back packs so a few pounds in camera bag is a nit. While on the subject of weight and bags, I bought a f.64 bag and I'm very happy with it. It has a shoulder strap as well as a belt so you can wear the bag like a waist pack. Works very well for me. With the 180 lense, I'm now carrrying more weight than every before but the new bag makes it seem much lighter. My old bag could hold everything, 24/2.8, 35-70/2.8, 105/2.8 micro, 70-210 junk zoom, and N70. But after a couple of hours my shoulder would just plain hurt. The new bag does not because the shoulder strap has far more padding. I just don't notice the F.64 bag. When I wear it as a waist pack it is out of my mind until I need something in the bag. Very impressed. So, which lens to get, as always, depends on how you take picutures. I am very impressed with the lense. It is allowing me to take pictures that I simply could not take before. Period. The fit and quality of the 180 lense is first class. The built in lense hood is very, very, very nice. You might want to check the archives of this list, as well as some of the other web sites that have reviews on the various lenses. Start with www.lisp.com.au/~mmphoto/nikon | Thanks for the advice Your welcome. Hope this helps... Dan McCarty
