Third party is much cheaper than NEW 80-200 two touch; but price close to 2nd hand two touch.

Personally I would opt for two touch; Compare third party, Sigma is soft wide open, especially at 200mm. Third party lens might have built-in motor and newer technology.

The biggest difference is the name/company/brand
Really, some people are brand concious and go by brand.

The colour, contrast, etc, if you do post processing, most probably it won't matter, besides, you have in camera picture control to adjust it to your liking. Unless you only shoot auto on standard picture control.

The main difference is the body design, which is obvious from the looks itself, then the grip, feel, etc. Button layout, design, navigtion, and the menu system. As for performance, you might need to test out each model usually. As for specs, you can basically see the difference from the spec sheet.

You don't have to read all at once and memorize all, plus, it's not exam or anything.

Just bookmark it, and refer to it when you see any of those term, it's easier and make u remember/understand faster. If you read all now, doesn't mean you will remember it anyway.

Acceptable for general use, it's soft wide open at many focal length, especially 200mm; For non-OS version, top up a little you can get used hand Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8D (two touch).

In the end it depends on the user, is it acceptable; The sigma however have HSM and the non-OS version have some macro capability.

Why only f/8?
Extra stop is good, it's an option, not a necessity. That's why, get what you need and use for. If you don't need the wide aperture, then just skip it, but it always come in handy. And it not necessarily use for landscape only, you can use it for many other purpose, you see people use it in weddings as well.

Yes, shooting raw, all the picture control you need to adjust, but in Lightroom, there is this profile settings, which auto adjust for you, then you can further adjust it. For the noise/grain, sharpening, etc, you need to do it manually as well.

With RAW, you have more/better flexibility to adjust the exposure and white balance as well.

If you camera have in-camera RAW processing, you can shoot raw, then process it from your camera and apply different picture control (e.g. vivid, portrait, etc) and see the difference or have different files. If no such feature, you can do it using CaptureNX/ViewNX.

ON FX (Full Frame) yes, on DX (crop) then no.

On Nikon Crop sensor (DX), you need to multiply the focal range by 1.5 to get the actual range:
35 X 1.5 = 52.5mm

Wide = 24mm~35mm


This post has been edited by Andy214: Feb 25 2011, 08:54 AM

There's also something call High Speed Sync or "Auto FP High Speed Sync" (need to set in your camera), which will allow faster shutter speed, the flash will keep firing continuously (very fast) during the exposure or during the small exposure between the 1st and 2nd curtain.
Not sure if your old Flash can work with the camera though.

LoL, FroKnowsPhoto has a theme song now:

Depends on your budget; If you have the extra budget/money, go for Nikkor, else the 3rd party is cheaper by like a lot; So it depends on your budget and how you look at it.