minivini

Some "interesting" ideas suggested here. For quality image results, mirrors aren't often your best bet. If you want real reach and have the budget, you won't find a better lens (price and quality) that a nice Nikkor 500/4P. You can pick up a great one for under $2000usd. If that's a little on the high end, the still north of $1000usd is a lighter weight Nikkor 400/3.5 ais. I owned the 500/4P for over 15 years and found it to be a truly superlative optic. I only sold it because my imaging interests changed pretty dramatically. At their current prices, you won't ever lose much value if you decide to sell later. Since both lenses use high end optics, but are mechanically simple and lack electronics, you'll be getting a lot of value for the money, and the lens should remain completely functional for decades to come.

Thanks for the actual helpful replies. The rest of you belong over at dpr.

Just curious. After perusing the quite long, and often pedantic thread regarding FW4, has anyone tried simply renaming it (eg 3.5)? Seems like that would potentially allay any concerns about not being able to update to FW4.0 later, once the official drops, and if this leak turns out to be a beta. I'll be installing probably tomorrow evening, and plan to try this unless someone already has with bad results.