[Hacker]

Following the Thorpe Park mishap at the weekend it was good excuse to get a new lens and after some deliberation I decided on the Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8 after reading good reviews and recommendations on here. The only thing that put me off was the price, the cheapest I could find in the UK was about £870 with s/h ones on ebay going for around £750.

On Sunday I found one on ebay with no bids and starting at £400, I asked the seller if he had a price in mind and he came back to me with £475. Yes please! He is a pro photographer and has now got a staff job so is selling off some of his kit and I just happened to stumble across it at the right time, I suppose being Easter ebay was quieter than usual.

Any way the lens turned up this morning and whilst it has a few rub marks on it the optics appear to be excellent and I went straight out into the garden for a couple of test shots. These are as shot.

f2.8 @ 55mm:


100% crop of the same shot:


It looks pretty good to me, I will do a more comprehensive test soon but at that price I am very happy.

It's also a good bit bigger than the 18-70 kit lens but I didn't realise by just how much until I set them down side by side:

[Markulous]

Looks good from here! Well, they say every cloud (or should that be cloudburst? LOL!) has a silver lining!

[Sonsey]

Nice one Colin, congrats on a great bargain...

...tbh I was half expecting the test shots to have been taken with a D2x!

[Dave]

Originally Posted by Sonsey

...tbh I was half expecting the test shots to have been taken with a D2x!

Same here

Congrats on the lens ...... really works well with the D200

[P-E]

Looks good.......now stay away from water

[Dave]

Hey, he's got a Pro lens now ..... Colin's your next Jacques Cousteau

[VikingPhotography]

Originally Posted by Dave

Hey, he's got a Pro lens now ..... Colin's your next Jacques Cousteau

LMAO

Still, as pro as the 17-55 is, even it wouldn't have survived the absolute drenching that his old kit lens received.

For extremely wet conditions I keep the following in my kit bag:

Kata E-702 Elements Cover

The images there don't do it justice, so take a look at this

http://www.kata-bags.com/DownloadCen...ad/E-702-2.jpg

and this

http://www.kata-bags.com/DownloadCen...ad/E-702-1.jpg

You don't have to use it on a tripod mount since it can be easily handheld - I was out on at Niagara Falls about two years ago on one of the Maid of the Mist boats and used the E702 on my D2X with 17-55DX attached, snaring pics like this



The front element of the lens was the only piece of my kit exposed to the intense spray of the falls - everything inside the Kata cover was bone dry... unlike the rest of us!

As much as the D2X is rated to withstand up to 0.8cm of rain per hour, I didn't want to put that rating to the test within the first few days of what was to be a three week vacation... moreso since I only owned the one body at the time