Getting to know the Nikon ED AF Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8 D
In my 50 years of film photography, I have never owned or even used a “big telephoto” lens. The closest thing was probably a Nikon AF Nikkor 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6D I bought when I had my Nikon N90s in the 1990s. Lately, I have been enjoying making some pictures of our Golden Retrievers at play and especially when we take them to a nearby dog training facility that has a pool where they can swim. In those instances, I wanted a lens that would allow me to really get in close and capture the action.
As I looked at various options and read reviews, my research eventually took me to a legacy Nikon lens; the 80-200 ED AF-D f/2.8 constant aperture beast. The 80-200/2.8 was Nikon's absolute top-of-the-line professional telephoto zoom at its introduction in 1997. This lens is made of metal, it’s heavy, quiet, super-fast focusing and optically amazing. Mounted on my Nikon F5, this kit is formidable and weapon-like.
80-200 Nikkor on my Nikon F5
I’m used to walking around with 50mm standard prime lens on my F5 or at the most, my 85mm f/1.8. This lens took some getting used to. There’s a tripod collar on the lens and if I didn’t have to be moving around a lot near the pool, it would have been easier to work off of a tripod. But I needed to be mobile and get a workout, so I put my most comfortable Peak Design camera strap on the F5, loaded up some Kodak Tri-X and gave my new lens a test drive.
You can tell that this is a professional lens. Fit and finish is extraordinary and despite its weight and size, it balances perfectly in your hand on a camera like the F5. I really thought that shooting in bright sunlight into water, this lens would hunt and peck for focus, but it was fast, quiet and sure.
With a camera like the Nikon F5, it is easy to burn through 36 exposures. The only color film I had in my camera bag that day was some Kodak Portra 800, so I spooled that up and continued shooting.
I didn’t do any post processing of any of these images. They are all straight out of the camera. Not perfect by any means as I am still learning my way around this lens set up. But I had fun. And so did the pups.