Sub-$1000 prime around 200 or 300 mm?

[Astigmatism]

I've grown a nice set of Fuji XF prime lenses from 14 mm to the 80 mm macro, and have the 2X teleconverter too. But where are the primes in the neighborhood around 200 or 300 mm?

In my 35 mm film photography days I had Canon equipment, almost all primes, including their 300 mm f/5.6. I loved that lens! It was a clean cylindrical shape with a built in hood that slid forward or back, which was very convenient and made it really easy to pack. That'd be similar to buying a 200 for my new X-T30 II.

But they don't have Fujinon primes in this space. I have 160 when I use the teleconverter on the macro. There's not much point in buying the 90 mm prime as it's so close to the 80. And they have the 400/2, which I'd love to have, but it's way out of my price range. And nothing else between them.

There's the 70-300 zoom, which I guess I'll get when I can (they seem hard to find though I have watches set at a couple stores). I'd have preferred a prime, though. I do own one zoom, the 18-135, for "one size fits all" needs, and its long end is worth having. And, there's the 100-400 zoom. If I got into the right mood, I'd order that, but it'd be kind of irresponsible for me to pay nearly $2k for it.

I did order a cheap Tokina manual catadioptric lens, 400 mm, $250, to get a top end that reaches way out there, though it will probably be a bit of work to focus it well. It was supposed to arrive yesterday but is running late. We will see. I've never had an autofocusing interchangeable lens camera before, and I really like how accurately and quickly the camera does it, so an autofocusing lens would be nice.

Surprisingly, 3rd parties hardly offer anything prime in this range, either.

What can we hope for?

[Astigmatism]

21 hours ago, cpX said:

Hope gives way to certainty extremely quickly.

Wow, that's for sure. I crept downstairs last night and ordered the Fuji 100-400.

All the same, there are some... interesting... options out there with T mounts. In the film days, I really enjoyed experiments with the lens off the camera, using other means (sometimes a separate lens of some sort and sometimes not) to create an image. On the down side, ruining the sensor would be a much bigger deal than ruining film. But on the up side, I could work incrementally and see what each photo looks like before taking the next.