>>4302281Landscape shooter here. A large portion of my work is actually done at 135-200mm. Personally, if it were me on an 80s SLR, back when I was in college my zoom of choice was the Vivitar Series 1 70-210 f/3.5, and you want the early version designed by Ellis Betensky who did all the optics for the NASA Apollo program.
Believe it or not, I have gotten outstanding results out of a 20 dollar Soligor C/D 80-200 f4.5. It is a sleeper lens that no one talks about and if you paid more than I did for one you paid too much. It's a basic push-pull lens like many of the era. I bought it to learn camera repair it was loaded with fungus and once I cleaned it, it was a stellar performer on my Nikon digital system. I ended up keeping it in my bag. Very sharp even in the corners, if you're doing landscape you're stopping down to f/8 and f/11 anyway for increased DoF so speed isn't really something you need. It's got excellent contrast stopped down and it also has a basic macro function which does I believe 1:2 or 1:4. Takes a 55mm filter.
C/D stands for Computer Designed so basically their answer to Vivitar Series 1. Outstanding optics. I was genuinely surprised from the results. There are several 80-200's Soligor made, you want the one that looks like this. In the budget category, nothing touches it and stopped down to f/11 it gives my 70-200/2.8 VR a run for its money. Unless you were pixel peeping, you would never know.
Find one, you'll love it.
