thomas_fabian

Okidokee, here's a real honest opinion on this lens as opposed to the petty bickering between a few gear headed geeks.

 

The minolta(now sony) 18-200 lens is suprisingly good for a hyperzoom. Saturation, Sharpness, and Contrast are all very good.

 

I own this lens for the mere purpose of having a lightweight all around lens that focuses closer than 6 feet. Sure I have every grouping of lenses and zooms between 17 and 200 already, but my 80-200/2.8 Blows chunks when i cant focus closer than 6 feet some times.

 

Will this lens replace any of my other lenses...NO, but it stays on my camera 85% of the time I pull it out of the bag.

 

The downsides to the lens i feel obligated to discuss as well.

This lens is kind of sluggish and darn loud while focusing. Speaking of focusing...this lens tends to have trouble focusing in low light as well. Distortion is kind of nasty at 18mm but that goes almost completely away at 24mm.

 

Whether or not you should buy one of these do it all lenses is up to you in the end...my suggestion, go down to your local store and ask them if you can try it out a demo in the store and give it a good work through all fstops and zoom ranges.

Hey.....just wing it.....for the most part infrared film's qualities make exact focus nearly imposible....but if you want to try it...just get the right focus then focus just a hair.....i mean literally a hair closer(if focus is at 2 feet focus for 1.9....get the drift) anyway i've used infrared numerous times without giving any regard to the ir focus mark........and they come out close enough. Oh and most importantly have fun.....nothing is really what you expect with IR....even if you've used it hundreds of thousands of times....variances in the weather can affect the IR levels being emitted.....just find an iteresting subject and shoot away....I do recomend konica's infrared though, it's much better and the iso setting is pretty close to what they say it is....kodak's i had problems with underexposing a lot

http://minolta.com/releases/2004/0213_03_01.html

 

Straight from the horses mouth

Go Look at the PMA Website, Check the exhibitors list, It has minolta displaying a proffesional digital still camera...what that means i don't know but I'm hopin it means DSLR

There's something new in this issue....when my 50/1.7 lens is attatched the ttl flash works perfectly

Yeah...sunpak flashes don't always work with cameras....i have a maxxum htsi and a maxxum 9xi and a sunpak pz4000af and the flash works perfectly on the sucky htsi but is over exposing 3 stops on the 9xi....so i'm getting a minolta flash now....i suggest you get a nikon flash.....get them used at like keh or something....much cheaper and though the finish might be messed up a little it'll work perfectly.

No manual settings on the flash...the thing that makes me think it's not a the ttl issue you stated is that the flash does get the information, it's just always 1 stop over ie...at f11 the flash puts out enough light for f16 and will do this at all distances my personal guess is that we have a compatibility issue because the camera is about ten years older than the flash.....i think that the camera can't process the info fast enough for the flash to shut off at the right time.....I'm just trying to see if that really is the case before i take the camera in and get it looked at for a few hundred smackers just for them to tell me that the flash and camera aren't exactly compatible. I think that the xi flash series might be the answer.

get the tokina 80-200/2.8 you won't be dissapointed

I recently aquired a maxxum 9xi to go with my maxxum htsi plus. When

i got the htsi plus i got along with it a sunpak pz4000af and

everything was going well however, when i got the 9xi i decided to

give it the 'ol once over with a flash/light meter. Both the htsi

plus and the 9xi check out perfectly in comparison with the

flash/light meter in ambient and with eachother in all situations.

However the problem comes when i slap on the flash. The htsi plus

checks out perfect with the flash meter, but the 9xi is consistently

1 stop over exposed.....so i decided what the heck it's an older

camera i'll just overide it, so i dialed in -1ev compensation, but it

was still off, in order to achieve the right ttl flash exposure i

have to dial in a -3.5ev compensation. Is this a compatability or

camera issue.

The problem is the 10D...For some reason, the 10D starts out pretty sharp, but some how...no matter how hard you try, anything slower than 1/125 comes out blurry....even on a tripod. I have a friend in the comercial industry who uses one from time to time to shoot digital events, and even with a tripod and cable release, anything slower than 1/125 comes out blurry, and while sharpness improves the faster the shutter speed, image quality is still sub-par. Personally i believe it's an issue with the sensor somehow being moved away from the focal plane after some use...Or that the lens mount is being pushed forward or away from the lens during use, indeed this is the reason i went with a minolta film system on which I too have the tokina 80-200/2.8 and must say after months of sports shots not-a-one has come back blurred or lacking contrast. Other than that, i can think of one last thing....it may possible be a corruption problem in the lens software since cannon is a huge pain in the @$$ about lens compatibility with third party lens makers...Canon likes to keep users using their lens system. Did you send the lens to canon or tokina?

I had the same problem......It's something like an automatic switch off in case there's a button being held down constantly, all I did to fix it was to take out the batteries and switch the power to on to let all the power cycle out of the camera for a few minutes.