no answer ?? (1 Viewer)

Maybe my questions were stupid? maybe i need to rephrase them?

SUPER ZOOM NIKON AF-S 80-400 VR is this lens ok for birding? will it give me decent length?
can I use a tc with it to extend its range?
Is £600 a good price for a used one

hopefully will get some replies with this attempt ;-)

thanks
Ash.

Not a Nikon user but I would think that the lens should be good for birding, the Canon equivalent (the 100-400) is very popular. You will at times want more reach (this is true whatever lens you use) but I suspect that adding a tc will degrade the image quality on this lens. Tcs tend to work well with fast prime lenses but not with slow zooms. Not sure on pricing but as new it is about £1000 it sounds a fair used price, however there is a new version of the lens now so prices might drop a bit and there might be quite a few comin up secondhand.

The £1000 (new price) Nikon 80-400 is NOT an AF-S lens. The AF-S model is very new and costs more than twice as much. I doubt that you'll get a s/h one for £600 unless it's been stolen.

The older (non-AF-S) 80-400 can be used for birding and you will see some very good results in the gallery but the focus is relatively slow. You can buy third party teleconverters but the IQ drops off dramatically (in my experience with a Kenko 1.4).

I hope that helps.

Bill

Thanks both, the lens in question is an afs its £600 or 30,000 baht as I am in Thailand so that may well be the right lens for me in my price range.
Thanks both very much for the info.
Ash.

My first lens was the original 80-400 in conjunction with a D200. The lens is very sharp I aimed for f8 so if you have good light it's not a problem.The main drawback was the very slow AF speed which is also noisy. As you don't have that much reach you need to get fairly close to the subject and more often or not it was away before I had focused. In the end I sold the lens and bought a much more expensive 300mm f2.8. as I became frustrated with it. If I was starting all over again and at that time I would definitely have chosen the 300mm f4 which will take a TC and is a much better buy in my opinion.
Always nice to have a zoom facility but when it came to birding 99% of my shots were at 400mm.
Incidentally, I did try the 80-400 lens on a D3 once and found the performance improved, presumably because the camera body generated more power from the bigger batteries. You can also use the focus limiter too but it's still slow.

thanks Dave

The only AFS version of the Nikon 80-400 is the new one which retails for more than $2700. The earlier version sells new for $1500, and there might be one used for $900. As suggested, AF is quite slow with the older model and teleconverters are going to be unreliable even if you used the Kenko teleconverter

The Nikon 300 f/4 is a good option. Also the 70-200 f/4 is a good lens but not really long enough. I'd have to think about the Sigma 150-500 or Tamron 200-500 with a budget below $1000.

The camera body you are using can make a big difference in image quality and AF performance. Many camera bodies will not focus reliably beyond f/5.6 - and the Sigma and Tamron lenses go to f/6.3. They will AF - just slower and less reliably.