Searching in vain

We've spent the last week researching a new lens we need to acquire to fill a gaping hole in our coverage and to give MChes something to shoot with while we're out our requirements:

1. ED glass with max focal length no less than 300mm
2. Hand-holdable
3. Fast [f2.8 hopefully]
4. Fast AF [AF-S preferable]
5. VR would be very, very nice considering that we'll be using it handheld under rainforest canopies

And, of course, we have to be able to afford it. We were thinking about the 80-400mm VR, which is really versatile. But I've looked at hundreds of images online from people using it, some of which are explicitly designated as proof of the lens' superior optical performance, and they're all garbage. Nothing doing, I won't touch a lens that will ruin an otherwise awesome picture with bad glass. Plus the lens is slow and the AF is super slow.

So we were looking at a variety of 300mm primes. The 300mm f2.8 would be sweet, but the AF-I and AF-S versions are too heavy to hand-hold and the VR versions are so fantastically expensive that it would be more economically feasible to switch to barnacle photography than to buy it. Same for the fabulous 200-400mm f4 VR.

So maybe we'll get an old, cheap used 300mm f4. Not as fast as we'd like, too-large depth of field wide-open, and no VR.

So we just can't get what we want. It's frustrating.