larryepage Loc: North Texas area

I've had one of these lenses for probably a little more than 5 years. Seems like the price was maybe $1200 or 1400 or so when I bought mine. It is a great lens at a great value, even though the price has crept up quite a bit since then. Optically it is very, very good. The VR is also very good, allowing hand-held use in situations beyond what you might think would work. Autofocus is also good, but remember that this is a f/5.6 lens. It's not going to autofocus like a f/2.8 or f/1.8 lens. There is a distance limiting switch that can be used to help speed things up some, though.

To address your concern, yes, this is a big lens. 500mm is just short of 20 inches. So it is quite long when fully extended. The tripod foot & ring has also generated some negative comments, especially when rotating it on the lens. I have never had any problems, but my habit is to loosen the locking screw just enough to allow rotation and not enough to allow for a lot of sloppy extra movement when rotating.

The 200-500mm is not a professional grade lens. It is not weather-sealed, and in fact it breathes a lot of air in and out when extending and retracting. A little common-sense care will let neither of those issues be a problem. And oh, by the way, folks have complained about the "long throw" rotation required to zoom the lens in and out. Did I mention that this is a big lens and that it breathes a lot of air in and out when zooming? If not for the long throw, the force required to turn the zoom ring would simply be too heavy to manage with any sort of grace and ease. The increased rotation allows for much more manageable "fine tuning" when making final framing adjustments.

One last thing...this lens does not come with what I would consider a serviceable case (or at least it didn't when I got mine). Instead, it came with what Nikon calls a "dust bag" or "dust protector," which is a cloth bag with a reinforcing disc in the end. This is not suitable, in my opinion, for transporting the lens. I found a Tamrac semi-soft case (like comes with nicer Nikkor lenses) for some sort of 400mm zoom at my local camera store that works great. There's no room left over, however, so my suggestion is to have the lens with you and make sure it fits when you go shopping for a case.

Unlike some folks, I don't use this lens a lot, but when I need or want it, I'm glad that I have it. Because of that, I'm also glad that I paid an appropriate price for it. Unless you are going to be trying to use it in really hostile environments, my thought is that you will most likely be quite pleased with it.

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

While that was posted on the Nikon Rumors site the actual roadmap was created by Nikon. There is no “rumor” involved. Here is an updated roadmap. In particular pay close attention to the opening line in the article.

https://photographylife.com/nikon-z-lens-roadmap

Bill_de Loc: US

If you want something from Nikon on the 200 - 600, Nikon has a link on their site to sign up to be notified.

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redlegfrog

Not as heavy as my old 500F4, thats part of why I bought it.
Down side, auto focus in dim light not good. If it's late evening you need to count on focusing by hand.
When you are in its happy place it takes great pics.