You're right about the compression. I'm not sure what I was thinking. I had in mind a photo I took with a Sony H1 at 432mm, and how it looked like my wife and dogs were crossing a median near some houses when really they were about 2 football fields away from the houses. Somehow, I thought "I don't think you'd get that effect with the crop sensor effect". But, duh, the H1 is a 6x crop factor body. I was seeing that effect with a 72mm lens. So yeah, compression works with the cropped effective focal length. I still recommend the 85mm.