On 19 Oct 1998 11:55:35 GMT, rmhutch48@aol.com (RMHUTCH48) wrote:

>Anyone have experience with this lens? My old Nikon 80-200 F4.5 is getting
>very loose and is, of course, quite large. A local camera shop is selling the
>Vivitar for $80 in excellent condition. It also uses 52mm filters. Any
>thoughts/recommendations?

Since these are the very easiest zooms to design, older, cheap
zooms in this range are often surprisingly good - as this one
is (and so was an Albinar 80-200 f3.9 I recently acquired).
Generally, Nikkor lenses easily beat (or at least marginally
beat...) even the best of the off-brand lenses, but Nikon
has slipped in the image quality of some of its lower-priced
lens offerings lately, and the Albinar was sharper than a
Nikkor 70-210 f4-5.6 AF I recently checked along with it...
(blame the sales success of Canon, which for some time has
offered "optically-challenged" lenses at reduced prices to
attract the masses - and Nikon is now adopting the formula,
it appears...;-).