Seeking the holy grail.

[BruceP]

What I want is a super telephoto that weighs next to nothing; small enough to carry in the bottom of a bag; image stabilised and costs next to nowt!

Solution.
Picked up an olympus E-510 in duty free at the airport for the 2x crop factor of the sensor. (~£320)
Picked up a secondhand sigma 600mm f8 mirror lens in Nikon fit at a local camera shop (£125)
Bought a nikon to 4/3rds adapater from an internet auction site (~£11)
Bought an "AF Confirm / IS Emulator for Olympus 4/3 Body e.g E-510" from the same auction site (£16.50).

The IS/AF chip is very difficult to assemble but finally I got it glued together and glued to the nikon to olympus adapter ring. After 30 minutes of fiddling I thought the chip must be faulty and nearly thow the whole lot away, but somehow then it seemed to respond to the programming commands, so I told it that it was F8 and 600mm and lo and behold, the IS light came on in the viewfinder showing that I now had an image stabilised 1200mm f8 lens (in 35mm terms).

I don't appear to get the AF confirmation light coming on anywhere near what I think is in focus and although you can programme this, it still doesn't appear to work properly.

I now have a super telephoto setup, less than a foot long, with image stabilisation that I can throw into the bottom of a bag and not worry about for less than £500.

Downsides are the narrow band that is focused and the doughnut halos created by the mirror lens of out of focus highlights but when I don't want to carry a largge tripod, gimbel head and long heavy telephotos this will do me fine.

I let you know how it works, and show some images when I've used ii for real.