With Matt coming to stay with us again next month in his third visit to Singapore, we’ve been chatting a lot about camera gear and equipment. He’s picked up a Nikon D90 and the 35mm f1.8 lens for this trip. Ling’s quipped that I’m a bad influence on him in this regard.:)
On my end though, I confess I’ve been looking still at the same lens that’s remained on my radar for more than a year now: the Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 VR (brief blog entry about it nearly a year ago here):
![blog70200mmvrr[1]](https://www.chekyang.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/blog70200mmvrr1.jpg "blog70200mmvrr[1]")
It just costs a royal bomb that easily jolts me back to reality: the older iteration of the lens’ USD1949, and the newer one an even fatter USD2334. Way, way, waaaayyyy too much for what I’ll ever care to pay as an amateur for a lens, no matter how excellent optically and versatile it is.
There’re far less expensive third party options though, like the Tamron 70-200mm f2.8 which costs a modest USD770…
… just that it reportedly focuses pretty slow – a non-starter considering what this lens is specifically best intended for. A slightly better choice is the Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 at USD799:
But while the Tamron and Sigma each cost just slightly over a third of what the Nikon lenses cost, neither of them are optically stabilized – which is a downer. Now, if only both manufacturers offer the same lens with that, it’d be a killer lens! Matt pointed to me the other week a discount 10% coupon for Sigma lenses at Amazon. I just need to wait for the two events to coincide, then it’d be a hard offering to pass up.:)
*salivate* i also want 70-200 f/2.8L IS =P but it’s too expensive and too heavy on my 7D for a frail girl like me =((
Once a third party lens manufacturer, Tokina, Sigma or Tamron, comes up with a 70-200mm f2.8 with optical stabilization, it’ll make a killing… especially when the first party manufacturers are all charging so much.