In article <55fp48$gva@cobra.Minn.Net>, loki@minn.net says...

> [...] I'm also thinking of aquiring an additional 85 f1.8 lens for
>available light stuff - how is this lens in quality? I'm not sure
>I liked the 80-200 [4-5.6] - it seemed a bit cheap on the construction
>side and it was slow. Is the 80-200 2.8 a good lens? I know its heavy,
>but I'd still consider it (I've had good results handholding my Tamron >200-400). I guess I'm wondering what folks would suggest on what lenses >would make good replacements for covering the 35mm - 200mm range.
>I would need the "d" type lenses as well. Any suggestions would be
>greatly appreciated. Thanks!

The 85mm f1.8 AF Nikkor (heck, ALL the 85mm Nikkors!) is excellent,
as is the 80-200mm f2.8. If you are into slow zooms, the 24-120mm
f3.5-5.6 is excellent (especially in the 24-85mm range - see recent
post of mine on it in r.p.e.35mm...). The 35-105mm f3.5-4.5 AF D
would also be a good choice. In general, the primes offer greater
speed, better wide-aperture optical quality, easier manual focus,
smaller size, and lighter weight than the zooms, though (and 95% of
the time, the "D" feature will probably not do much for you....).
You may have missed my "SUBJECTIVE Lens Evaluations (Mostly
Nikkors)", version 5a, which includes a listing of all Nikon SLR
lenses ever made (and some others - with a *SUBJECTIVE* evaluation
of many of them, a general description of Nikkor lens performance characteristics by lens-type groups, and comments on particular
lenses when the general descriptions plus the subjective evaluation
numbers are not sufficient to describe performance), which can be
found at these sites:

-- Jan-jaap Aue: (nice text format)
http://www.phys.rug.nl/mk/people/aue/nikon/david.html
-- Quang-Tuan Luong: (nice text format)
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~qtluong/photography/35mm/nikon-neuman.html
-- Niklas Nikitin: (nice table format)
http://www.cs.hks.se/~nicke/private/photo/lenstest/david.html
-- Leo Verwoerd (plain text and table formats)
http://utopia.knoware.nl/users/leover/nikkor.htm
-- Bo-Ming Tong: (plain text format)
http://www.cs.arizona.edu/people/bmtong/nikon/c.html
(number 13 in table of contents)

Hope This Helps