Thanks Scott. It also (obviously) fits very nicely in the Pelican 1510 roller case I use for these lenses (what the lenses are sitting on in the photo). The 400 and 600 are each a tight squeeze due to their diameter and can\'t be packed with the front cover (which didn\'t bother me much). With the 200-400 being much more like a 500/4 in proportion, the lid closes without any pressure on the lens. I\'m really looking forward to using it for field sports.
Playing around with it at the computer, the 1.4 swings into place very easily. It has a bit of a \'peak\' to the motion, where it feels like due to some spring resistance, you need to push/pull the lever to about the halfway point, where it will then slide into place on it\'s own. Therefore, it\'s not necessary to consciously have to move the lever the full distance in either direction to ensure proper placement. The optics of the 1.4x are surprisingly small and narrow in diameter (its lens elements).
A few other observations:
The lens does not appear to be parfocal; if you set focus at 200mm it will be soft at 400 at the same subject distance, though going 400->200 seems to be slightly better, perhaps due to better AF precision at the longer focal length.
Early observations seem to indicate that the lens does hold focus when switching the TC in or out of position, both if focus was set with or without the TC in place.
A lower profile tripod foot might allow more aggressive zoom swings when hand holding. As it is now with the stock foot, I can generally swing about halfway through the zoom range before having to readjust my finger position. With it being only a 2x zoom, the zoom action in the viewfinder is not all that dramatic. Due to the long zoom ring travel distance (appears to be about 90 degrees), it should make it easy to very precisely set a desired focal length at the expense of quickly racking from one end to the other. So far I think this should be OK for sports action where subject to camera distance generally does not change extremely quickly unless very close, at which point this lens will probably be too long anyway, but we\'ll see.
Paolo: Unfortunately I don\'t have the v.3 2x... as I don\'t really do much *extreme* long lens work. I\'m sure Peter will be able to address this.
