Trading up
Today I traded up my mid-range telephoto, moving from a 70-300 f/4-5.6 to an 80-200 f/2.8. The “why” of this decision is pretty simple: at the shorter focal length I gained a stop, at the far end, two. For a guy who pretty much insists on shooting with natural light this is a huge, huge benefit. One other thing: zoom and focusing are both done internally, so no moving lens while zooming in (I hate that).
Check out this test shot:
It’s even better in it’s bigger form.
I had to open this one using Adobe Camera Raw because I wanted to keep the metadata. Other than that, I made no changes, adjustments, etc. to it. After you get done looking at the winding of the strings (zoinks!), take a look at the background. Notice the nice breakup (I guess it’s called “bokeh”)? Isn’t that swell?
Two things not to like about this lens are the weight (2.5x heavier) and the slight torque reaction you get when it has to cover a large range to get focus. My D2H (the primary target for this lens because of it’s heavy-duty motor) is still in the shop getting the meter fixed, but I noticed the torque even with the (relatively) puny motor of the D70.