Thanks for all the nice responses.
About the legacy lenses, these ones are very good performers in my experience. I suppose modern coatings are better, but the mechanics hardly so. The lack of auto focus are fortunately of no concern for this kind of use.
@Andrew: Nice to see you again too, my friend.
I woke up a bit too early that day (in a tree-top-cabin), but going back to sleep was impossible when I saw the fog drifting across the water. Fortunately, I always keep a pair of rubber boots in the trunk of my car, and they really were handy when walking along the rather treacherous shore line. Other treacherous things were also found, as shown in the picture below. Not so visible straight on, and the high reeds gave the web a height matching my face. It was so big that I think it would almost cover my entire head if I had not seen it the moment before being caught.