Stewart wrote: >Canon offers USM in nearly all focal lengths and even in the cheap >plastic zoom jobbies. Well, the cheapest USM lenses do not provide manual focus override. And they are not faster nor quieter than traditional AF lenses. You need the larger USM ring lenses for that. It took some time to Canon before being able to introduce cheaper USM lenses, and that might be true for Nikon as well. I don't question the benefit of the full-time manual override, but don't forget that not all AF Nikon cameras can drive AF-S lenses, not even all current ones. Nicolas.