Evan C , Mar 21, 2010; 04:41 p.m.
I'm looking at buying a used, 5 year old 80-200 AF-D, and shot some test shots out in the sun yesterday, at around 1/100, f5-f7.
I'm looking at the shots in lightroom now, and am having trouble pinpointing a good correction number for the chromatic aberration. In some shots, it seems to be around +15, others at 0, some at -5, some at -15, etc.
I shot some more test shots with a used AF-S in a local camera shop and they all seem to be correctable at about -5, though I haven't looked at those shots as closely.
Is this something I should be concerned about, or should I go ahead and buy the lens?
There are 4 test shots in my photo stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/40463553@N07/
Wouter Willemse 
, Mar 21, 2010; 05:49 p.m.
Hi,
My 80-200 AF-D is certainly showing CA. It's a quite known thing about this lens on digital. Nothing to really worry about. Your flickr samples look pretty free of CA to me, at least on the sizes on which you have them available.
Apart from the CA and sometimes the weight, the 80-200 is just a very very nice lens. Quite sharp wide open, prime sharp stopped down a little. If the price is right, I wouldn't let it go because of the CA.
Disclaimer: I use the Nikon software, which typically deals with it automatically, and only in "heavy" cases I need to finetune the CA correction. So I may not see the issue to its full extend.
Evan C , Mar 21, 2010; 08:25 p.m.
Yeah, I forgot I had lightroom configured to publish to flickr at that resolution. I'll try to export them and post them at full resolution later.
Thanks for the input in the meantime!
Scott Murphy 
, Mar 21, 2010; 09:45 p.m.
Chromatic aberration will vary with focal length and will be worse at the longer focal lengths.
Tom Mann 
, Mar 22, 2010; 01:50 p.m.
There are three common causes of color fringing. Transverse and longitudinal CA plus blooming. The first is zero on axis and increases in intensity as one goes out to the edges of the frame. The second effect is almost constant over the frame, while the third problem only occurs on very bright edges, and can occur anywhere in the frame. The latter has more to do with the body/sensor than the lens.
I own the same lens, and under the right conditions, I can see all three effects. My feeling is that the CA adjustment in PS / ACR / Lightroom only attempts to deal with transverse CA. Thus, it is no surprise whatsoever that you can't zero out all fringing. NX2 and DxO may take care of both transverse and longitudinal CA.
I haven't made a systematic study of fringing with this lens because the problem never has been bad enough to take time to do this. As pointed out above, unless you got a bad sample, it's a fine lens. I wouldn't let it bother you.
Tom M.
