Good points to ponder, Dave, about long lenses. They are not for everybody, and, in fact, I probably do more wide-angle shots of trains than telephoto shots just because the "telephoto squash" effect has been so overdone and I want to achieve something different in my photos.
At CSX we needed the long, fast lenses mainly for INTERIOR available darkness photos during our annual meeting of shareowners, and used them for occasional outdoor train photos! Really. We rented them for these purposes, but concluded that we might as well purchase the Nikkor 200mm f/2 and 300mm f/2.8 with the TC-200 and TC-300 tele-convertors to have on-hand all of the time. So, we bought the two lenses used from Del's Camera in California for something like $2750 and $2850 in perfect used condition in 1988 (these are non-AF lenses). When our department was closed at CSX in 1993, I purchased the two lenses for, I believe, $275 and $300! No, I did not leave off any zeros. At that price they were a steal--I guess CSX figured that they had screwed us photogs enough by suddenly eliminating our jobs, so (after putting up a fight) sold us the equipment at about 10% of its purchase price so that we newly unemployed ex-employees could go into business for ourselves and do photo work for CSX on a free-lance basis. That way they would still get the photos that they needed without having to pay our salaries, benefits and overhead. I am glad they did because in the summer months I got really tired of working 100-110 hours per week for 40 hours of pay! In any event, I never would have purchased these big lenses at their regular retail, discount, wholesale or used pricesin order to just make nice train photos, impress anybody at trackside or unless I absolutely needed them in my photo business, which I don't. I use the long lenses mainly to manipulate the perspective in a scene and alter the spatial relationships between the subject, foreground and background, not necessarily to get closer to the subject or to make it larger in the viewfinder as with sports photography. Of course, I also live in the visually-bankrupt Mid-Atlantic region! But they are nice to have, "just in case." John B. Corns -> SPORRS: Serious Photographers of Railroad Related Subjects -> Web Site: http://www.anet-stl.com/acphotog/sporrs
