Home Search Gallery How-To Books Links Workshops About Contact
Nikon
18-200mm Construction It has a rubber gasket seal at the lens mount. This helps protect your sensor from dust. Mine is made in Japan. Others write that theirs are now made in Thailand. Of course I personally pay premiums for things marked "Made in Germany" or "Swiss Made," but I'm crazy. My extraordinary D200 is made in Thailand, and as far as I'm concerned the D200 is the most advanced camera made in the history of mankind. I wouldn't worry about it. Thailand is a nice place quite different from Communist China. Thailand doesn't filter the internet; people in China have written that my website was blocked! Nikon has their own factory in Thailand which makes all this. I suspect that there is more variation from lens-to-lens from any given factory than there is from lenses from different factories. These lenses are in such short supply you can't be picky. If you are, get what you can today and you probably can sell your Thai lens for a profit if you find a Japanese one later. I suspect the initial batch was made in Japan and then transitioned to Thailand, so there may be no more Japanese ones. The outsides are plastic and the mount and innards seem to be metal. It's a precision instrument without any of the play or slop I expected, normal in most of my other AF zooms. One guy on the internet managed to break his 18 - 200 into two pieces: front and back. Mine's fine. Beat on any zoom hard enough and bad things happen. The 72 mm filter thread is a little stiff, which is great because the moment I got my lens I screwed a 72 - 77mm step up ring into it which I probably will never take off. It's good it's stiff so when I unscrew 77 mm filters from the step up ring I'm less likely to be unscrewing the step up ring from the lens. It's nicer than the 12 - 24, 18 - 70 and 24 - 85 AF-S lenses. |
