I have owned one of the original 80-400mm lenses almost since its inception and it is my lens of choice for hiking and wildlife hunting. It performed fairly well, and while it had its flaws, the versatility and weight more than made up for them. Very little sarcasm in this lens.* Teleconverter required. And still has great autofocus and sharpness at 1.4x TC. The old lens doesn't work with TS.* Much sharper and richer in contrast. Wow. There's a fairly noticeable improvement in optical quality, even with normal viewing. The old lens took great photos but was a bit soft. My 600mm prime lens is sharper but it's damn good and I probably wouldn't notice a difference unless I was looking at similar shots of birds at 600mm and this 1.4xTC lens side by side. Without TC, it's sharp enough that it would be very hard to see anything to complain about except in lab conditions.* Autofocus is faster. To be honest, it's not that much faster than the original 80-400 that you'd miss a lot of frames, if at all. The continuous servo autofocus is loud but better than the original. It's very good for birds. In areas with the teleconverter attached, you'll lose focus due to the minimum aperture, but it's still pretty damn good. He captured and tracked the plane perfectly for my daughter's first solo flight. This is an excellent lens for airplanes and air shows.* Close focus. Still damn good and fast. Good for critters you can get close to. Great for bird feeders.* Enhanced VR. Virtual reality will help a lot with handheld photography for some subjects, but it's utterly useless for fast-moving subjects. VR can help with some nice bird effects that allow you to blur the movement of the wingtips while keeping the scene intact. Unless you're in bright sunlight with this lens, especially if you're using a TC, you'll probably still bump up your ISO. You can't get your foot off the tripod collar, which is annoying when shooting from your hand. Get a good collar and detachable leg from Really Right Stuff. It's still a heavy lens and you'll get tired of holding it if you're not in good shape. If you're going to be using it a lot, get some exercise! Taking photos is a good method :) If you have the opportunity to use a tripod, do so. That will help. Get a gimble head if you can (I like Really Right Stuff - it works great as a panorama head too). Ball heads aren't great for object tracking, but they're quick and easy to set up and smaller and lighter. Some of them, like Acratech, do a pretty good job as pseudo frames on a good tripod. There's 1.7x, but 2.0x is too much of a compromise for me in terms of viewfinder brightness, aperture, and focusing. This combo is easy to transport and easy to use. Most of the time 80-400 is enough, and when that's not enough, TC works great. If you can justify the cost, this kit will make you very happy.
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