The lens is ‘soft’ because you/your camera can’t/didn’t focus on the bit you wanted in focus. This is a real problem with lenses with extremely shallow DoF. Maybe your technique is bad. Maybe your camera [D200] isn’t good enough for your lens [70-200 f/2.8 VR]…
See the whole series:
http://www.lensrentals.com/news/2008.12.22/this-lens-is-soft-and-other-myths
