Yeah, I'm learning the lesson that cheaper stuff just doesn't pay when it comes to certain photographic gear. Buy it right, buy it once. I was reminded of this yesterday looking at shots from an event where I used mostly my 70-200. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but there's no contest between the 70-200 at 70mm and my Sigma 18-50 at 50mm. And even though the Sigma's actually pretty good, it's just that the Nikon is exceptional. It's good enough that it warrants buying a top line DX body just to use it with the nasty bits cropped out. If Nikon's older pro glass is this good, how's the new stuff? Someone hurry up quick and buy that 24-70mm and tell me it's as good as I suspect it might be...
This raises a familiar dilemma for me. I could buy the 17-55 for $800 used, sell my Sigma for about half that, and make a pretty much state-of-the-art DX lens kit for $400, and something that looks about a 1/2 stop brighter and 1 stop sharper on the normal range. Additionally, I could sell the D300 and pick up a D7000 for a difference of about $500 after taxes. All in, for about 900 bucks, I make a solid 2 stop improvement to my kit. Then just wait it out to see what happens across the full frame market.
But, I'm afraid that in a year from now, I'll be back at it, selling something to finance something new, and it gets annoying.
Thoughts on VR. It doesn't freeze motion. Only high ISO's or large apertures allow that. Lost some shots at the long end yesterday because the shutter speed wasn't high enough for the subject motion. Needed 1/320 for the reciprocal rule, but was getting 1/50th in aperture priority (ISO 1600). A useable 6400 would have come in handy.
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