Can lens defects/damage cause blurriness?

<p>Hi there. Am I blaming my own sharpness problems on my equipment, or do I have a real problem!?</p>

<p>I work for a newspaper and all my gear is owned by work. Now, I've noticed problems with the 70-200 lens. There is often bluriness, in the same spot (left of the image when horizontal, top of the image when vertical - it's the same place because of the way I hold veritcally). The blurriness doesn't look like "normal" bluriness, if that makes sense, but it's hard to describe why. <br>

I'm often using this lens wide open or nearly wide open, so my original conclusion was simply that I had done something wrong. However, I've been extremely cautious about it and was recently using it for a shoot. Shutter at 1/250, continuous focus point with the focus point ON THE SUBJECT'S FACE... and it's still blurry! Plus, I took MANY shots and they are all blurry! <br>

<br />When we had a Nikon service guy visit, he took a look at my lens and notice at the "end" (you know, where you put the filters :P) it sort of caved in a bit, and remarked "You dropped it!". Well, some photographer before me certainly had! He took a hammer and hammered it out so it looked better... but it seems like it still may have a flaw? </p>

<p>So what do you think? With my focusing technique above, is it reasonably to suspect the gear may be at fault?</p>

It sounds like misalignment of an element, lens don't like being dropped or having heir filter ringed hammered back into

shap! You can test for that yourself by mocking up a test target, but it will need to go to Nikon to be fixed properly.