Mike,
Good on ya for pointing out the Kiron. It's one of the unrecognized and
wrongly shunned names for folks who worry about buying anything other than
camera manufacturer-branded lenses, or those from Tamron, Tokina and other
recognizable sources. In fact Kiron (as Kino Optical, if memory serves)
made some of Vivitar's early Series 1 lenses before a rumored contract
dispute (no offense Brian, and please correct me if this history is
incorrect) caused them to introduce their own designs under the Kiron brand
name.
And regarding your experience with your own zoom being sometimes less than
satisfactory at maximum focal length, keep in mind a couple of factors.
Many zooms are strongly affected by flare at maximum focal length (and some
at minimum focal length, for WA zooms). My Canon FD 100-300mm f/5.6 is one
of these. I'd nearly given up on ever using it again at 300mm. Then I got
back a series of pix I'd snapped of my mom fishing, taken at the 100, 200
and 300mm lengths, as I stepped back to achieve the same approximate
framing. Each photo was equally crisp, well saturated and just plain great.
Then I realized what the problem had been. Flare. But in this series the
setting sun was behind me. No chance for flare and the pix were great.
Evidently the lens hood I've been using isn't up to the task beyond the
200mm setting.
Also, my zoom has a very narrow sweet spot at 300mm. While it does well
between f/8 and f/22 from 100-200mm, it's pretty much limited to f/16 at
300mm for ideal results.
Lex
----Original Message Follows----
From: miaim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Samu...I recently got a Kiron 80-200 F4.5 lens that is worthy as a
possibility for your considerations...
At first I thought this lens wasn't sharp, and was kind of disappointed.
But when I really analyzed the pics from the first roll through it, I
realized that the ones that seemed a bit out were all at 200 setting...I've
put a couple more rolls through it, paying more attention to tripod/support
usage and guess what? The photos have improved with each roll so far. It's
my personal theory that a lot of
the non-OeM lenses get a bad rap precisely because too many folks try to
handhold them beyond their abilities.
Mike Swaim
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