This is the lens I found most useful for wildlife and birds before the advent of image stabilized auto focus lenses. Other folks may live in areas where animals are more tolerant of human approach than I, or sufficiently patient to use blinds, but I find I need the reach lenses like this behemoth allow. It pulled small critters in for frame-filling compositions where shorter focal lengths come up, well, short! In fact I usually had a TC-14B teleconverter attached making the combination an 1120mm f8.

The downside is, of course, size, speed and weight. There is no way a photographer can set this thing up and bring it to bear on a target quickly. Also carrying it any distance was difficult too for, mounted on the Gitzo 410 tripod and Wimberly gimbal head, the burden was in excess of 30 pounds and an awkward to carry 30 pounds at that.

While the lens focused only to 30 feet, the use of a PN-11 extension tube permitted it to get to 17 feet and two tubes allowed a 14 foot minimum distance. I found a single PN-11 allowed for nice, tight hummingbird compositions.

Control of vibration when using lenses of this length is very important. I found I could get sharp results at very slow shutter speeds by using a monopod under the camera body in addition to the tripod. Usually though, the subject would not be sufficiently cooperative to permit me the luxury of setting the monopod in position and higher shutter speeds were required. I  contrived a window mount that permitted use of this lens from my van. In many cases this permitted a closer approach to a subject than would otherwise be possible. While this lens was never easy to use, it was capable of very good  results. An example is  the pronghorn antelope close-up  taken with the 800mm and 1.4X extender. It was a wonderful lens for wildlife despite its ponderous dimensions and lack of autofocus.

PostScript: I replaced this lens with the Canon EF600 f4 L IS shortly after Canon redesigned their telephoto line up. The combination of auto focus AND image stabilization in the Canon line, unavailable from Nikon at the time, was too much to resist. So, the big Nikon pictured here, is history. It served me very well the 3 years or so I had it.