Pentax SMC P DA - telephoto lens - 70 mm F/2.4

77Ltd - A fantastic lens.

Advantages: Sharp, Well built, Good looking.
Disadvantages: Purple fringing, Price.

The Pentax FA77mm is one of the best lenses around. It combines excellent build quality, and a small size to create a world class lens - up with the likes of Zeiss, and Leica lenses. Its has great resolution throughout its aperture range. I have used the lens on an APS-C camera, but not yet a 35mm SLR, though have heard it performs just as well on both. Although wide open the corner resolution isnt fantastic, once stopped down the resolution is high all over the shot. The bokeh (Out of focus areas) is beautifully rendered by the 77Ltd, producing smooth backgrounds and excellent areas of shallow depth of field. Colour is vibrant and strong, and there are no odd blue or orange colour casts. Purple fringing sometimes occurs on APS-C digital SLRs, as with most lenses, but only in high contrast situations (Eg. Shooting trees against the light ...

Ikillrocknroll 27.06.2008 · Read full review
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Review of Pentax SMC FA - telephoto lens - 77 mm F/1.8

The nikon 70-200mm F2.8 VR, top-of-the-line

Advantages: Beautiful bokeh, tack-sharp, vibration reduction, easy to use, many useful accessories
Disadvantages: heavy, expensive, slight vignetting, prone to flaring

their version, the so-called "vibration reduction", was the 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 ED. An interesting lens to be sure, but Nikon owners really started to get excited at the announcement of the AF-S 70-200 F2.8 VR. This lens, a successor of a highly regarded line of professional lenses, turned out to be spectacular: the image stabila? sorry, the vibration reduction was possibly even more effective than Canon's and the image quality? Well, I am going to discuss that right now! ---Image quality--- The 70-200 VR is a tack-sharp lens, as you would expect of a lens in this price class. It is not even in the same ballpark as normal consumer lenses: the colours are vibrant, the details sharp, and the bokeh (the appearance of parts of the picture that our out of focus) is stunning. The lens is particularly famous for the silky smooth rendering of out ...

hetvuurtje 24.03.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Nikon Zoom-Nikkor telephoto zoom lens - 70 mm - 200 mm F/2.8

Sigma EX DG 70-200mm f2.8 HSM Macro

Advantages: Build quality. Finish. Range. Fast maximum aperture.
Disadvantages: Image quality not as good as expected. Chromatic Aberration.

circle. At 70mm, it is minimal, even at f/2.8. However, at 200mm, it does become noticeable at f/2.8 although stopping down completely eradicates the problem. This is not however the case when using the lens on FF (full-frame) cameras when vignetting 'is' visible, although not too much of a problem. However, at 200mm and at f/2.8 it 'is' really quite noticeable. Stopping down does improve the situation, so it is still not a major problem. Resolution or 'sharpness' is for me, a little disappointing. At 70mm, even at f/2.8, it's not too bad, with the central area of the frame appearing quite sharp. The edges however, are just a little soft I find. I would describe it as VERY GOOD+ in the centre, VERY GOOD at the edges and GOOD in the corners. Stopping down to f/4 improves the edges and by f/5.6 the corners too have improved to VERY GOOD- in ...

davecham 28.12.2008 · Read full review
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Review of Sigma EX telephoto zoom lens - 70 mm - 200 mm F/2.8