Advice needed: 200-250 mm

I'm feeling the need to add something a little longer to my lens collection. Right now the longest I have is the Olympus 4/3 40-150mm, which is excellent, but sometimes isn't quite enough. What I'd like is a 200mm (maybe 250?) with either of the following characteristics:

(a) Significantly faster than my 40-150mm (f/5.6 at 150mm); or
(b) Significantly higher IQ than my 40-150mm, so I can better crop

Obviously I'd like to have both of these things (and light as a feather as well!) but I'm trying to be realistic, because I can't afford to spend too much on it. My budget is probably < $100, unless something is just too good a deal to pass up.

One more thing: I've tried several 300mm legacy lenses and rejected all of them. Either they were too heavy and unwieldy, or had poor IQ (especially CA), or both. That's why I've set my sights on something smaller.

Suggestions?

 

Thanks Kevin.

The Vivitar has been on my radar. So too the Pentax, but I've had bad luck in the past with CA on Takumars, so I'm a little leery. Have you noticed any undue CA on your Takumar?

I've been eying a 200mm Canon FD f/4 in the new FD mount. Only 440 g, and the few reviews I've managed to find seem to suggest it's very sharp.

Any thoughts on this one?

Does anyone else have any experience with Canons?

 

Interesting. I always thought Canons had a warm cast, but I have to admit I've never shot with one.

I live in Florida where bright, contrasty conditions are common. It's really a CA torture test for some lenses, and many of the older telephotos I've tried really fare poorly. I'm going to look more closely at the Vivitar.

Again, thanks for your advice. I really appreciate it.

Tom

 

Happy to report that I think I've found my lens. Bought a Canon FDn 200mm f/4 and put it through its paces today, shooting my standard test scene. I'll post images later, but here's a quick synopsis of the results:

(a) Lens is really sharp from f/4-f/11 in the center, sharpest at 4/5.6-f/8;
(b) Little soft at f/4 at the edges but sharpens up quickly upon stopping down;
(c) Very little CA, a little purple fringing but not bad . . . and I was trying to produce it;

And now for the interesting part, to me:

(d) Significantly better than a slightly up-sampled image from the 40-150mm Olympus 4/3 at 150mm, f/7.1 (the sweet spot for this lens at 150mm);

(e) When up-sampled, practically indistinguishable from a 300mm image from the Oly 70-300mm 4/3 lens @ f/8 (again, the sweet spot at 300mm for this lens). This was the part I liked best--I've replaced my $300 zoom with a $40 lens, with practically no loss in IQ.

I upsampled cropped images in LR3 to native size, 4032x3024 and compared them at high resolution in FastStone.

Oh, and the lens is nice and light and is easy to hand-hold. (Wouldn't want to do it without the VF-2, however.)

Couldn't be more pleased!!!