Contax Vario-Sonnar T* 70-200mm f3.5-4.5

Its cost HK$3500 and is half of the N70-300mm, very attractive for contax user, but of course not price competitive compared with similar lenses of other Japanese brands. It produce sharper image than N24-85mm and also N50mm F1.4, really surprise to me.

Light in weight and handy compared with N300-70mm. Very good optical quality and colour balance. Very solid structure, only one tube extension while zooming instead of two tubes extension like N70-300mm, it gives me more tough feeling in constriction. Relatively larger aperature F3.5~4.5, half stop faster compared with similar zoom range lenses

Unlike N24-85mm, N70-200mm need to turn off the switch on the lens from AF to MF when using MF focus, less convenient. AF speed is still slow compared with Canon USM and nikon AFS.

N70-300mm F4.5~5.6, nikon AF 70-300mm F4~5.6 ED, Canon EF70-200mm F4. Pentax AF 80-320mm F4.5-5.6, Pentax A 70-210mm F4.

Nil

My wife and I use this lens as part of her Contax NX system. She also has the 24-85N lens. I have tested most of the Zeiss 200 mm lenses including the manual focus 200 f/4, 80-200 f/4 and the 200 f/3.5 (the latter was my choice for my manual focus Contax system). This new 70-200 f/3.5-4.5N is probably the best of the bunch. It has no chromatic abberations (color fringing) at any focal length, even at the edge of the field and distortion is very low (couldn''t see any). Also, there is almost no vignetting wide open at full zoom (a bit of light fall-off at full aperture, but very little). The older manual-focus 80-200 f/4 zoom has significant vignetting and fall-off under the same conditions. The resolution of the new lens looks very high at all focal lengths and is good even wide open. Stopping down helps more at the extreme corners of the frame. The color and saturation are extremely good, even compared to the 24-85N. Focusing is a little noisier than with the 24-85N but about the same speed, which is good but not quite as fast as the latest Canon offerings, for example. You have to move a switch on the lens to go between auto and manual focus (no full-time manual focus override). There is no zoom creep and the zooming action is smooth but a bit on the stiff side. The manual focusing feel is well damped. The lens is fairly light-weight and balances well on the NX. Overall, another winner from the Zeiss N zoom designers. Testing was done with Fuji Velvia slide film with the NX camera mounted on a sturdy tripod. Subjects ranged from scenics to portraits to still lifes to closeups using auxillary lenses (Canon 500D). Slides were examined with loupes on a color-balanced light box and under a 15X microscope.

Sharp, abberation-free optics Relatively light-weight Relatively affordable

No full-time manual focus override as in the 24-85N.

Contax 200 mm f/3.5 AE Contax 200 mm f/4.0 AE Contax 80-200 mm f/4.0 MM zoom Canon 200 mm f/2.8L

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