I know that some of your are saying to yourself, "How does Wink hold steady that ancient (no vibration reduction) long telephoto lens?" The answer is: I cheat, which means I use a shoulder mount from BushHawk which makes using it similar to using a rifle. You shoulder and fire just as you would with your rifle, with a button under your trigger finger and it's very fast.

http://www.bushhawk.com/bushha...hawk-shoulder-mounts

Below is a person of interest to me with my Nikon D7000 camera attached to an old Nikkor AF-S ED-IF 300mm f/4, which makes it the equivalent of a 450mm on the APS-C sensor of that camera. Obviously, you can see that it is mounted on my BushHawk shoulder mount. I used a Kirk lens collar for the mounting.



(Picture data: camera Nikon D700, lens Nikkor VR 28-300mm at 78mm, aperture f/5.6, shutter speed 1/125s, ISO 200)

The point is, one can find old but fast non-stabilised lenses for a lot less than the new ones, and they can work just fine if you do your part. And what some don't tell you is that if you are using a shutter speed of 1/500th or faster (which I always do with a long lens anyway) the vibration reduction does not even come into play and should be turned off. Fashion photographers who love to use the 300mm under controlled lighting conditions might like VR, but it's useless on a tripod and is only useful below 1/500th of a second when hand-held. I'll bet the people who sell you lenses don't tell you that.

The photo below is to get some perspective (my wife's kayak club was holding an invitational tournament for youngsters) and the start for races was between the round white buoys which you can see out in the lake, almost at the opposite side of the lake and on the left side of the photo. The furthest of the two buoys is just a dot on this photo.



(Picture data: camera Nikon D700, lens Nikkor VR 28-300mm at 28mm, f/9, 1/320s, ISO 200)

So what do you get with a 450mm lens perspective? Below is an un-cropped photo of the race starters at the white buoy, taken from the same general area across the lake as the pontoon photo.



(Picture data: camera Nikon D7000, lens Nikkor 300mm AFS, f/8, 1/2000s, ISO 1800)

The icing on the cake with old but fast telephoto lenses is that they usually have excellent bokeh (the quality of the out-of-focus areas of the photo) and you can take candid portraits without the subject knowing, resulting in more natural facial expressions.


(Picture data: camera Nikon D7000, lens Nikkor 300mm AFS, f/8, 1/2000s, ISO 4500) You can see the noise in the background areas at ISO 4500 but the Nikon D7000 handles it quite well. (Both the Nikon D700 and the Nikon D7000 at ISO 200 have pretty much zero noise) I could have used f/4 and gotten the ISO down to around 1200 to lessen the noise, but I like the slightly increased depth of field at f/8 and a shutter speed of 1/2000 is pretty much of a necessity for a hand-held 450mm equivalent. The noise doesn't really affect the acceptability of the photo.

So, if you don't have $6,000 for a new VR stabilized Nikon telephoto lens, buy an old 300mm AFS Nikkor and clamp it to a shoulder mount, they work just fine. Even cheap prime lenses are better than most zooms in terms of image quality, but somehow most people want a zoom, or two, or three, in spite of the fact that they are slow, produce a lot of distortion and usually less ruggedly built. The practical applications for animal as well as people photography in Africa seem obvious to me.

Yesterday was a holiday in France, allowing me to get out and play with my toys.

I shoot Nikon for sports using either or both of my favorite sports lenses --- the 70-200 f2.8 VR II and the 200-400mm f4 VR lens.

I rarely use a shutter speed below 1/1000 and most of the time it's above 1/2,500 so the VR and VR II features I've never used plus there are some negatives associated with using them the makreting people don't like to discuss - but mostly it slows focusing which is s nopno for shooting sports.

I think the 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 VR is one of the best bargains Nikon and I have one in my kit as a backup -- it was good before they brought out the new VR version and it's even better now as they improved the optics the same time they added VR.

I use a monopod to steady my bpdu and lens and do have a couple of briends that use much modified BushHawks for birds in flight.

A 200-400 f/4? I'm jealous and you're too far away for me to borrow it for my Tanzania trip.

I bought a 500mm Reflex-Nikkor on ebay last week. This one is going to be a real challenge to hold steady, probably requiring a monopod at the least and preferably a tripod. I "chipped" the lens so that my Nikon D700 recognizes it and I can use all the exposure controls of the camera. So far I've only taken about 3 photos in the backyard, hand-held, but the color looks good and the donut bokeh may prove to be interesting. The focus indicator in the viewfinder also works when the lens is chipped, and this will be handy indeed. It's been awhile since I last used a manual focus only lens.