CameraHobby - Nikon 80-200mm f4.5-5.6D AF Lens Review

B&H Photo - Video - Pro Audio

Search and Shop at the B&H Store

Articles and Reviews

Home >> Photography >> Film Equipment

Nikkor 80-200mm f/4.5-5.6D AF

My second serious lens and companion to my original 35-80 lens and my 35-70 lens for a time until it was replaced by the 80-200 2.8. It cost me over $300 when I bought it and I thought I had a hell of a kit at that time. I loved the way the lens could pull in distant objects in a lightweight package. I was quite happy with this lens until my consumerism got the better of me and I had to upgrade.

I had the lens when I went to Montreal and Las Vegas and it seemed like the perfect travel companion. When I used it in Montreal, I did notice something weird about the lens that I couldn’t explain back then as a rookie. When I used the lens at the 80mm focal length, the viewfinder seemed fine, just like when I used my 35-80mm lens. But when I zoomed out to 200, the viewfinder got grainy and darker. I handed the camera to Kenny and asked him about it but he didn’t know either. After countless books and internet surfing on the photographic hobby to enrich myself with knowledge, I now know that the graininess was due to the variable aperture zooming of the lens and that the viewfinder was simply showing the closing of the aperture as the lens zoomed out. At the time in Montreal, I worried considerably about whether or not my F70 was screwed up or if the graininess would show up on my prints. Of course, all was well when I got my prints from the processor.

I also had the lens for Las Vegas and for a day trip to the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon. The lens did very well in pulling in the distant north side of the Canyon, as I tend to like isolating my scenes. The Velvia slides came out very well. Perhaps too well as the slides and subsequent prints I had made from them were very saturated, beyond reality in fact. The day that I was at the Grand Canyon, the landscape was a boring mix of various shades of brown. A bit of red here, a bit of yellow there and a whole lot of sandy dirt everywhere else. When I got the slides back from processing, I was blown away that the colors were so rich and vibrant. I was an instant fan of Velvia, cartoon colours and all.

The 80-200mm lens suffers from the same weaknesses as the companion 35-80mm lens. Lots of plastic in its construction, plastic lens mount and questionable build quality. Popular Photography calls the lens about average in its class so it’s not exactly blistering in speed or optical quality. But I think it still fine for most amateur applications but truth be told I never enlarged any photos taken with this lens or the 35-80mm so I can’t comment about its true character in more serious applications. I do however, have the opportunity to do such tests with this lens as it is still in the "family" with my brother-in-law. It could be interesting to see how this cheap zoom lens compares to my five-times as expensive f/2.8 version.

Comment from reader:

Edwin

I realize your review of this lens is old and you may know better now, but you have made a small error. You say that the darkening of the viewfinder at the longer end of the zoom is because the aperture closes down as you zoom out. That is not really correct.

When you zoom out on a "variable aperture" zoom, the aperture blades do not progressively close down, they don't move at all (unless you move them).
What happens is that at longer focal lengths, less light reaches the film plane area. The front element can only let in a given amount of light at any one time interval. At 80mm, you have an image comprising a certain concentration of light per given area of film (or CCD sensor). Zooming to 200mm is like taking a small rectangular crop from the original image at 80mm, then spreading it over the whole film area.

The light in the rectangular crop becomes diluted and therefore less intense and appears darker in the viewfinder. The same thing happens if you move your slide projector twice as far away from the projection screen. The image gets bigger, but it is less bright.

They should be called variable f/stop-value lenses because the f/stop is a mathematical formula which has focal length as one of its variables when calculating a lens' speed. What is variable is the "effective aperture", i.e. speed, not the diameter of the diaphragm opening.

Constant aperture zooms are complicated designs which get around the problem in other ways but are bigger and more expensive as a trade off.

Cheers

Michael P
Sydney Australia

Taken with the 80-200mm lens

Correspondence & About this website