So, after shooting for a half a year with this camera, I've decided a wide zoom would be a waste of money. What I really find myself wanting is a decent telephoto zoom.
The wish-I-had-those options:
Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8 ED AF-D - no VR, $850 used
AF VR Zoom Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 G-AFS ED-IF - all bells, whistles, singing, dancing, $1500 used. Sigh.
The one I'll probably get:
Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5 - 5.6G ED-IF AF-S VR - about $550 new.
And then there's non-VR options below that, but I really don't think I need to be saving that money. There's also a slow 80-400mm that costs $1500 which sounds unattractive. There's the 18-200mm VR super zoom (which is DX only of course), but it costs more than the 70-300mm and the 70mm is plenty wide for faces.
The consumer 70-300mm is a pretty logical choice, but it's not cheap. For just a little bit more, I could get the pro 80-200mm f/2.8 which would be a lot faster, but lacks VR. The f/2.8 with VR sounds amazing but is way more than I need to be spending. I am pretty sure I can get better handheld images with the f/2.8 than with the f/5.6 VR, but jeez that's irritating not to have VR on a telephoto.
If somehow I could convince myself that I really needed the 85mm f/1.4 ($1000 used) in addition to a zoom then I could combine the two by buying the f/2.8 VR and just using that for portraits instead.
