digital camera lenses

When faced with buying a telephoto lens of this price, one natually looks to cut corners.

I can tell you from experience, don't. The cut-rate brands sold on Ebay (Phoenix, Opteka etc..)and elsewhere are simply junk. It's not that the photos taken with the the off-brands lenes are just bad and corectable via Photoshop, it's that they SO bad, that the autofocus on my Sony 717 simply can't self-correct enough to make the lenes even usable.

The VCL-HGD1758 works perfectly with very little/no loss of quality. I ended up buying one after trial and error. Learn from my mistake!

Your other options for a fine lens at about half the price are are the Olympus TCON-14B, Olympus TCON-17, Olympus B-300 and the Olympus A-200. They all work equally well on the Sony 707,717 or 828 but any of these non-Sony lens will require an adapter or step-ring to compensate for their non-58mm threads.

This is a great, albiet costly product. I sometimes question my own wisdom in buying a lens that is about 1/3 the price of the camera for only a 1.7X improvement in zoom (from 5 to 8.5 zoom) but I can't fault the quality.

Having owned a Sony DSC-f707 for a year now, I was looking to increase the optical zoom capability. This new lens fullfilled my objective. On the plus side, the images are clear with no detectable distortion. On the minus side, this lens is BIG. Not only does it take up alot of room, it's weight is significant. I found myself having to be very aware of my hand hold to prevent motion artifact.