Today is really my day!

[CaptainNapalm]

Today my wife and I went over to my mother in law's house. I brought over my d5100 to take some pics of their parrot just for fun. As I took out the camera my wife's mom said that there is a box in the basement with camera equipment her husband use to have. She told me to check it out and see if there is anything there I could find useful. I didn't have high hopes for anything decent because I didn't think he was into photography. Went downstairs and there was a Nikon D80 in great condition, but what was more exciting was two shiny lenses in like new condition: the 18-200 VR and the 12-24 Wide Angle. She saw me get excited about the lenses and trying them out in my camera and told me to just take them and use them. I looked them up and these are top class lenses both in the $1000 range each. I am very excited to start shooting with them. I was just considering spending money on the 70-300 zoom and maybe a wide angle down the road but I'm so excited to have a chance to use these for free. It's been a great day. Just wanted to share.

 

[MK3Brent]

which 12-24?

 

[goodguy]

Congrats my fellow Torontonian what a great story.
Enjoy your new lenses in good health!

 

[dsquare]

Wow! That's awesome!

 

[CaptainNapalm]

which 12-24?

AF-S NIKKOR 12-24mm 1:4 G ED

 

[Nikmal]

Which 70-200 vr??

 

[CaptainNapalm]

Which 70-200 vr??

Not the 70-200. It is the NIKKOR 18-200mm VR, which I just read was replaced with a VR II version in 2009.

 

[MiFleur]

I am happy for you, you have a great mother in law!

 

[MK3Brent]

Which 70-200 vr??

I think there would have been an abundance of exclamation marks in his first post if it were a 70-200.

 

[shadowlands]

Awesome score, gosh!!!!

 

[ph0enix]

which 12-24?

AF-S NIKKOR 12-24mm 1:4 G ED

This one is a great find!!! Nikon's top end lenses have a gold ring around the front.
The 18-200 is an all purpose lens. It's not amazing in terms of image quality but its focal length range makes it very useful.
I'd take the D80 too

 

[cwcaesar]

Nice, great score!

 

[KmH]

Big score. :thumbup:

The 12-24 f/4 is about as good a Nikon DX lens as you can get.
While convenient because of it's superzoom 11x+ zoom range, the Nikon 18-200 is a jack-of-all trades, master-of-none lens that had to be designed around a number of optical issues.

All the design compromises they had to make leave some image quality issues.
Rather severe barrel distortion and soft focus at 18 mm. The distortion improves as the lens is zoomed, and it changes to pin cushion distortion at around 35 mm.
Focus is very soft around 135 mm, and gets somewhat soft from 180 mm or so to 200 mm.

Another issue is when the lens is used near it's close focus limit. For instance, when zoomed to 200 mm and used near the 200 mm close focus limit, the magnification delivered is only equal to about 135 mm.

Even with all of that, the superzoom convenience factor is so much more important to a lot of people they ignore the image quality issues, and Nikon sells a lot of their superzoom lenses.