Hi--

>I just meant that mine performs well at 200mm but has drawbacks at 80mm.
>If you're just talking about sharpness, then you are very correct, because
>it's still very sharp at 80mm. But since you've tested so many Nikkors,
>I was just wondering if you'd encountered the same distortion at that end
>with this particular lens. As for the vignetting, I'm not using a shade,
>and the vignetting occurs slightly even with just a skylight filter (you
>can see it on bright days).
> Charles Thorsten

Hmmm, virtually all zooms have barrel distortion at the short end (and
nastier pincushion at the long...), and some illumination fall-off at
wide apertures (more likely at the short end), so the above is pretty
usual for zooms. I guess one shouldn't assume that zooms will equal
primes - it is just a surprise when they do well in some respects, and
for most photo situations and for most people, their shortcomings are
not noticed (witness the many really terrible zooms out there that
people seem happy using....;-). BTW, I consider vignetting to be a
hard cutoff of the corners, as opposed to a slow rolloff in illumination.
Vignetting is unacceptable, but one can live with uneven illumination.