Help deciding on a lens
Well, I've been looking for the Nikon 80-200 af-d for months, second hand, and this week a local well known pro posted his up for sale because he switched over to Canon. Anyway, I met him today to look at the lens and shoot some pictures with it. It had some scratches here and there but the glass was absolutely clean. When I got home, in some 30 pictures at 80mm and at 200mm, mostly at 2.8 but some at f/4 and only a few are sharp. Flickr resized this but you can still see what I'm talking about, I shot the other 2 a few minutes later but you can still see the difference in sharpness
The 80-200 image larger, f/2.8 @ 200mm, 1/3200 :
One of the few sharp ones, f/2.8 @ 80mm, 1/4000 :
After this I was talking about it to someone else and he said it was normal and that in the beggining it also happened to him when he first bought the 70-200 2.8 and that it was because he wasn't holding it properly.... I know I wasn't very careful with holding the camera in a stable position, but it was because most of the images were taken above 1/1000 .
What do you guys think about this ? Should I meet him again, explain the problem and take a tripod or should I just skip this ? I'm a bit reluctant about skipping this deal because of two reasons: I've been looking for this lens for months and he used it professionally for years and liked it so much he bought an adaptor to use it with the 5D, but wanted AF so he's selling it.
The 80-200 image larger, f/2.8 @ 200mm, 1/3200 :
One of the few sharp ones, f/2.8 @ 80mm, 1/4000 :
After this I was talking about it to someone else and he said it was normal and that in the beggining it also happened to him when he first bought the 70-200 2.8 and that it was because he wasn't holding it properly.... I know I wasn't very careful with holding the camera in a stable position, but it was because most of the images were taken above 1/1000 .
What do you guys think about this ? Should I meet him again, explain the problem and take a tripod or should I just skip this ? I'm a bit reluctant about skipping this deal because of two reasons: I've been looking for this lens for months and he used it professionally for years and liked it so much he bought an adaptor to use it with the 5D, but wanted AF so he's selling it.
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Comments
Note that the image does have a bare patch that you were pointed at, so the AF system may have simply found focus on the wrong area of the scene.
Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
Put the rig on a sturdy tripod indoors and aim it at a focusing chart. Then you can pixel peep all you want to determine if the lens is sharp enough for you. Try different f stops and focal lengths.
Keep in mind that many have found that lens to be soft wide open particularly at 200mm.
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