Short Telephoto Lenses in this focal length are the bread and butter of any mammal photographer. Typically they're moderately sized and affordable verses their much larger and longer brothers. With the advent of the digital crop/mag thing, where you used to have to pay $4,000 bucks to carry around a 5lb 300mm f/2.8, you now get away wtih a $1,700 2.5lb 70-200mm f/2.8. So, lets get started.

• 70-200mm f/2.8 AF-S VR - This lens is the replacement to my venerable 80-200mm f/2.8 AF-S. The latter was a favorite mammal lens used on occasion for landscape work at its short side. Its long side was just a little too short for anything to do with birds unless you were really close at several really key locations. For example, where normally you'd have to use your longest lens with teleconverters attached and still be wishing for more, Homer Alaska is the perfect choice for shooting Bald Eagle because they're soooo close. Their proximity is just so available. Where you would normally need a 300mm f/2.8 AF-S with TC-14e, you'd be able to get away with a basic 80-200mm f/2.8 AF-S. The best thing is these kinds of lenses are easily balanced against the extreme weigh and girth of Nikon's pro style camera bodies like the D2h and F5. The 70-200mm f/2.8 AF-S VR meets the capability of its older brother and more. The addition of VR was extremely welcome. Since this lens is mostly used off tripod the hand held VR technology becomes really useful in low light conditions agains fairly static subjects. I really like using it with cooperative mammals like Big Horn Sheep living in special locations like Japser NP. They're so available so the long lenses are always needed or wanted, and the lighting can be a bit tough on occasion meaing slow shutter speeds are the rule of the day. Then sometimes you don't want to use your tripod for convenience purposes. At those times, VR becomes a life saver. For in-flight bird shots, VR is less of a need. In fact, I turn it off routinely to avoid using up too much battery power. The bottom line is I don't use VR all the time. Only when I need it. The lens performs admirably with the TC-14e effectively giving you a 105-280mm f/2.8 lens. Combine it with a D-series camera, you're getting a 157-420mm f/2.8 lens. That's an extremely capable combo in a realtively small package. I usually have it ready to go with TC-14e in my camera belt when shooting birds. All I have to do is take the D2h off the long lens on tripod and attach the shorter combo to be ready for just about any handheld in-flight bird opportunity in mere seconds. Highly recommend for those low light afficiandos needing a short to moderate telephoto zoom.

• 300mm f/2.8 AF-S Vers. I - Unquestionably this has the best overall optical quality of my entire toolkit. Not only that, it performs fantastically with either the TC-14e and TC-20e. The later is actually routinely useful which is way more than I can say for any other of Nikon's lenses--I get into that more later in this article. With film cameras, I always found the lens just a little too short for most telephoto lens situations. Whether at Jasper NP or shooting birds, the 300mm was always either a little too short or too long. As a result, I hardly ever used the lens. This all changed when I went digital with Nikon's D1h. The 1.5x crop/mag thing makes the 300mm equal to a 450mm. This is a very useful focal length causing me to routinely reach for the lens without worring about whether I'd get the image or not without cropping. In the Big Horn Sheep scenario with cooperative subjects, the lens performs admirably--honestly without compare. My first trip to Jasper from Los Angeles a couple years back I only took this as a long lens. I left my 500mm at home. I never missed it. My trip to shoot black bears a while back was only done with this lens. Maybe 1 or 2 percent of the time I wished for something longer than 300mm's. Now, add the utility of a 1.4x or 2.0x teleconverter that honestly hardly affects the optical quality of the image, you're talking a break-through in image capability. Regardless of the quality of today's zoom lenses, none will match this fixed focal length lens. There's no comparison. When you view a perfectly exposed and focus'ed 300mm f/2.8 AF-S image, it's enough to make you quit your day job and start in the terrible world of professional photography. The optical quality is like an addiction. Once you see it, you want all your images to have the same thing. But, unfortunately this kind of quality is honestly limited to few and far between lenses. I can't describe it more than to suggest to simply take the opportunity if offered to shoot a few frames of your favorite subject. Such an experience will convince you to give up on the margins of choosing between the image quality between cameras and just end the argument and get a 300mm f/2.8 AF-S. BTW, there's a VR version about ready to hit the streets that will be priced just less than the 200-400mm f/4 AF-S VR. While there are many many accolades of this particular lens it doesn't fit in my work flow. Its f/4 aperture is a bit too small for those low light occasions I love to shoot in while the wider f/2.8 keeps giving me action stopping shutter speeds. Its greatest inconvenience is you have to change teleconverters to adjust focal length. Clearly there's less convenience there but I think the optical qualities of the 300mm f/2.8 AF-S over come that. Finally, despite the comments from passer-bys, the size of the lens is quite reasonable. A 300mm f/2.8 AF-S with TC-20e is definitely smaller than a 600mm f/4 AF-S. Size does matter and being small is good. Highly recommended for long lens photography. Its in a league of its own with a usefulness that's totally understated.