[davidmanze]

    Hi guys....I've been playing studio portraits in the last few days and my Sigma 150mm F2.8 macro has been showing inaccuracies in it's AF precision......it's a great pity because at over four meters it's fine......but just where you want it...........it goes belly up!

 

    I've the AF50mm F1.8D (no laughing in the aisles please) as well as the AF85mm F1.8D, which is a decent lens and gives good results......

   For those longer focal lengths I have very little above 85mm,... there are the Nikor 105mm DC and the 135mm DC (with defocus control for softer bokeh) but they command very high prices.....the new AF 105 F1.4 is great but the price?

 

   I want to find a Nikor lens (to avoid any AF reverse engineering) which leaves with the AF 80-200mm F2.8 in there various guises and the AF-S 70-200mm F2.8.

  Well I don't want to spend much, in fact I'm at a 200 euros ceiling.......yeah I know last of the big spenders!

  But then..... I spotted a Nikor AF 80-200mm F2.8D push-pull version on the bon coin for 160 euros, the seller said that there was some fungus behind the front element, but that it wasn't much. I told him what I was using it for and the guy "volunteered to send it first for my appraisal" saying as he wasn't that knowledgeable he would prefer for me to see it before committing myself..

 

  The review of the lens on Lenstip basically stated that from 80-135mm the lens is good and sharp even wide open and that it's short fall is at it's longest focal length where things slip a little, basically the optics have remained the same (16 elements in 11 groups) until the introduction of the AF-S version. 

                Mechanically, well I'm not a fan of push-pull zooms at all, but the lens is built like the proverbial brick "dunny" and has screw-drive AF from the camera body, no VR or any other things that are going to make the lens too serious of a risk to disassemble and clean.

 

   So we will see what it is like when it arrives!