The Minolta AF 2.8/200mm APO HS is one of the early AF lenses (1987). I got my first sample in 1988 and fell immediately in love with it ... In 1989 I changed to the new high speed (HS) version. I have used it heavily, both for theater / concert photography as well as for landscapes. During the past 20 years the lens has been with me in the Swiss alps, in arctic Finland, in the Himalayas, in Tuscany and elsewhere. The 2.8/200mm APO is very light (720g), its construction however is extremely rugged. My copy fell down several times - usually on rocks or concrete -, and the lens hood doesn't look very good any more. The lens itself, however, still performs perfectly. On the 24 MP Sony alpha 900 everything (including the extreme corners) has an incredible detail resolution, even at f2.8. If any lens in the Sony/Minolta is near to perfection, it's the AF 2.8/200mm APO.

Below some 100% crops on the Sony alpha 900 (full frame, 24MP). The RAW files were converted using Photoshop / Camera Raw 4.6 beta. "Sharpening" was set to 50, the "Radius" to 0.5 pixels, and "Detail" to 50. No correction for chromatic aberrations was applied.

And here another example ...