[greypoint]

Yes - the 135-400mm is a good budget buy - I used one all last summer. Like most budget lenses if performs best in brighter weather when you can stop it down a bit. The great thing is it's lack of purple fringing in sunshine. I had a Tokina 80-400mm for a while too and that did suffer a bit from CA and was also harder to hold. The 135-400 is pretty easy to handhold if you keep the shutter speed up. The Sigma 70-300 APO is similarly good. The other way to go - which i'm presently doing - is the Nikkor 80-200mm f2.8 which can be got for around 300.00 on Ebay. A superb fast 80-200 which doubles as a 160-400 with the addition of a 2x teleconverter for longer range [or a 1.4x could be used]. Weighs a ton but easy to hold!