Dropped my lens - can anyone help figure out the problem?

[kevin99989]

I've been posting here regularly, and this is a bit off topic, but i'm wondering if you could me with this.

I dropped my lens off a cliff while climbing a waterfall last week (55-200mm Nikon 3.5-5.6). If found it at the very bottom of the trail. The autofocus still works, but the zoom ring is very tight to turn (but it still works). The lens does not have visible scratches on it, and I have tried to take shots with the autofocus on and off (manual focus), and with VR turned on and off.

This is my best result (attached) at 200mm; f 7.1 1/400; ISO 200; Photo was cropped to 1/5 size in the horizontal direction.

The focus is not sharp, but seems to some dreamy softness to it. Anyone seen this before??

[Matt K.]

Pretty sure that some of your inner lenses are out of alignment. Since every VR lens has some "floating" pieces of glass in it, I would venture a guess that one of the elements has come loose and your lens is toast. The repair for it would most likely be more than buying another lens. Sorry to hear about your loss, mate. But consider yourself lucky that the camera was not attached to the lens ....

[kevin99989]

Thanks Matt for confirming that. That's what I had thought. Earlier today, I picked up a used replacement lens (without VR) for just over 100 bucks, in very good condition. Just need to be more careful now