larsrc - I'll be shooting pictures at race tracks so I'll mostly be outside with natural lighting (doubt I'll take this thing out in the rain).
The lense I grabbed at bestbuy was a bit more than 200. I used it tonight to take pictures at my duaghter's belt test. The results were decent. The studio is well lit. The biggest problem is the n00b holding the camera. I used both lenses just to see what the results would be like. Out of 89 pictures I will probably keep 20 or so. I'm alight with that consider that the card holds 400 jpegs.
The fireworks stuff though came out much better than I expected:
On the way home I took a few pictures in the dark just to see what would happen. Here is the result:
The image is a blurry because I was holding the camera and the shutter was being run really slow. While the picture itself isn't anything great I am impressed by the amount of light the camera did pick up. On a tripod you might be able to get away with something like this.
[BTW - there are two street lights but the street is no where near as well lit as this picture would lead you to believe.]