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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Canon vs Nikon - entry level. (1 Viewer)

Also, as DX means that zooms have a +X crop factor I suppose this also applies to the bottom end of the zoom and a 10-20 DX becomes, say, a 15-30 on the camera?

The 35mm DX f/1.8 should probably be in your bag. It's inexpensive, fast, and great image quality. If you don't have any other fast lens, get this. It is really nice for evening & indoor shots in available light.

That 10-20 DX AF-P is supposed to be a very nice wide, though I've not used it. And it's only 8oz (227g)! If you want a wide, that's a great choice.

Shooting wide is it's own art form, and if you like to do that, go for it. I don't shoot wide too often, and when I do it is for getting deep 3d perspectives not to "fit more" in the frame. Personally, I'd try to get a more general walk-around lens because switching between 18-55 and 70-300 will miss shots and I find it a hassle when I'm going around as a tourist. I'd use a good walk-around lens like the 18-200 like 10x more often than I would the 10-20.

If the 18-55 focal length works for the majority of your shooting when not birding, then you can ignore what I'm about to say. I find 18-55 (24 - 80 equivalent) to not be that interesting of a focal range.

I think something like a used 18-200 DX AF-S VR or 18-300 DX AF-S VR would do more for me as a general purpose lens. The 18-200, while a bit heavy at 19.9oz (565g), is pretty inexpensive used. There are two versions of it with about identical optical performance. The "ii" version has a zoom lock to prevent lens creep if you're taking on strenuous hikes. With this, you would have one walk around lens and one sports/birding lens. I understand that usually one does not want to duplicate focal length (the 75-200 overlap), but for me it is more of a specialization of functionality (walk-around vs sports/birding) and to reduce lens changing.

The 16-80 f/2.8~4 E DX VR is also supposed to be great and it is pretty fast, but also expensive. That's 24 - 120 equivalent, which is right in there as a walk-around "street sweeper" focal length.

Marc
 
Thanks again for that Chosun, probably give that a swerve then. I think I am in a position to acquire a Tamron 150-600 G2 shortly after my camera arrives. Seen them as low as £835 new from a photographic eBay retailer. Presumably these are grey imports? Anyway the retailer has a physical outlet in Derbyshire that I could get to when making an important purchase like this.

I find it very hard to get good results w/ the Tammy 1.4 TC on the 150-600g2. You really start to need stable support and bright lighting and fine focus tuning. If find I get better AF performance on the 600 f/6.3 and can crop the heck out of it.
 
70-300 DX VR ED lens arrived and duly had UV filter fitted.

Watched a couple of tutorials about the D5600, one with a shouty bloke who looked like he’d escaped from an episode of The Hair Bear Bunch and another of nearly an hour and a half that was really instructive on how to set the camera up, negotiate the menus and explain about the various modes of AF, etc.

Set up the Nikon SnapBridge app link which seems to be working okay.

If you can figure out SnapBridge, let me know ;) Personally, I skip the whole wireless transfer unless I'm really dying to share a photo. It's a hassle, it eats the camera battery, and the IQ is often reduced unless you are very patient to transfer full size photos. I just don't find it worth the trouble. I plug the SD card into my laptop.

With youtube, you get what you pay for!

You could try some of these guides. They are for the d5300, but it should be pretty much the same:


A couple caveats.

If you will be cropping, shoot Large/Fine, not Basic as Ken recommends. Ken also like to get his in-camera settings just right and only shoot jpeg, not raw. I find that for action shots of uncooperative critters, it is hard to get the exposure right over the whole frame and I usually want to crop a fair bit. So, I like raw instead; I shoot raw/jpeg fine combo and do a first pass through the jpegs. If there's a shot I really like that was only so-so in the jpeg I might try to recover it from the raw (this is usually recover the exposure, you cannot do much about blur or lack of focus).

Ken has a "People" setting and a "Places/Things" setting. I think his People setting should work great for you. For the "Places/Things", you want a "Birds" setting instead. At times, Ken will mention "Sports" settings, and those would work for birds too. You can base it on Places/Things, but you have Continuous High, AF-C w/ 3D tracking, and a higher minimum shutter speed.

I usually shoot birds in M mode where I fix the SS and aperture to what I want (e.g. 1/500th - 1/2000th and f/8 ~ 10 or so) and then use auto-ISO and spot metering. I usually leave it at a pretty high SS like 1/1250 or faster to capture the opportunistic BIF and if I find a percher I will drop it down to maybe 1/250 - 1/500, depending on the situation, lens support, etc. As you are shooting 300mm vs my 600mm, you could go slower and open up the aperture more.

Marc
 
The 35mm DX f/1.8 should probably be in your bag. It's inexpensive, fast, and great image quality. If you don't have any other fast lens, get this. It is really nice for evening & indoor shots in available light.

That 10-20 DX AF-P is supposed to be a very nice wide, though I've not used it. And it's only 8oz (227g)! If you want a wide, that's a great choice.

Shooting wide is it's own art form, and if you like to do that, go for it. I don't shoot wide too often, and when I do it is for getting deep 3d perspectives not to "fit more" in the frame. Personally, I'd try to get a more general walk-around lens because switching between 18-55 and 70-300 will miss shots and I find it a hassle when I'm going around as a tourist. I'd use a good walk-around lens like the 18-200 like 10x more often than I would the 10-20.

If the 18-55 focal length works for the majority of your shooting when not birding, then you can ignore what I'm about to say. I find 18-55 (24 - 80 equivalent) to not be that interesting of a focal range.

I think something like a used 18-200 DX AF-S VR or 18-300 DX AF-S VR would do more for me as a general purpose lens. The 18-200, while a bit heavy at 19.9oz (565g), is pretty inexpensive used. There are two versions of it with about identical optical performance. The "ii" version has a zoom lock to prevent lens creep if you're taking on strenuous hikes. With this, you would have one walk around lens and one sports/birding lens. I understand that usually one does not want to duplicate focal length (the 75-200 overlap), but for me it is more of a specialization of functionality (walk-around vs sports/birding) and to reduce lens changing.

The 16-80 f/2.8~4 E DX VR is also supposed to be great and it is pretty fast, but also expensive. That's 24 - 120 equivalent, which is right in there as a walk-around "street sweeper" focal length.

Marc

I’ve just ordered the Tamron 150-600 G2 so I think any other lenses are out of the question till Christmas when I may coax a 10-20 out of the spouse. I would think 18-105 or 18-140 would be good walk-around lenses?

PS - battery went down rather fast in 2 days which I am putting down to SnapBridge so I may disable that by deleting the app.
 
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I’ve just ordered the Tamron 150-600 G2 so I think any other lenses are out of the question till Christmas when I may coax a 10-20 out of the spouse. I would think 18-105 or 18-140 would be good walk-around lenses?

PS - battery went down rather fast in 2 days which I am putting down to SnapBridge so I may disable that by deleting the app.

I leave my camera in "airplane" mode to turn off all the radio stuff. Do you have GPS in that camera? Turn it off too or put it in the low power mode.

Hurray for the 150-600 g2!

I think anything that gives you at least to a 135mm (equivalent) or more is a good walk-around lens. The 105 (160 equivalent) or 140 (210 equivalent) should be good in focal range.

Basing this off Ken Rockwell's reviews, the 18-105mm is not a good choice.

The 18-140 DX sounds like a good lens (https://kenrockwell.com/nikon/18-140mm.htm).

I've not used either. I used the 18-200 (2nd model w/ zoom lock) and it was a great lens.

Marc
 
If you will be cropping, shoot Large/Fine, not Basic as Ken recommends. Ken also like to get his in-camera settings just right and only shoot jpeg, not raw.

Ken Rockwell is a somewhat controversial guy, and with good reason. His advice to shoot in Basic is plain nonsense, for instance.

I find that for action shots of uncooperative critters, it is hard to get the exposure right over the whole frame and I usually want to crop a fair bit. So, I like raw instead; I shoot raw/jpeg fine combo and do a first pass through the jpegs. If there's a shot I really like that was only so-so in the jpeg I might try to recover it from the raw (this is usually recover the exposure, you cannot do much about blur or lack of focus).

I only shoot in RAW; I don't use it just for action shots. You can always tweak the colour balance, the contrast and so on very easily in RAW. You can also select an appropriate Picture Control if you use the (free) Nikon software, Capture NX-D. The latest version that came out in September is a very nice piece of software, and unlike the earlier versions doesn't need too much computing power.

I usually shoot birds in M mode where I fix the SS and aperture to what I want (e.g. 1/500th - 1/2000th and f/8 ~ 10 or so) and then use auto-ISO and spot metering. I usually leave it at a pretty high SS like 1/1250 or faster to capture the opportunistic BIF and if I find a percher I will drop it down to maybe 1/250 - 1/500, depending on the situation, lens support, etc. As you are shooting 300mm vs my 600mm, you could go slower and open up the aperture more.

Yep. Fully manual with auto ISO is the way to go. Check out the video by Steve Perry on Youtube on this topic, he explains the reasoning behind this very well. With the AF-P 70-300 I leave the lens fully open all the time; the lens doesn't get any better when stopped down.

As far as the AF is concerned, I usually use single point AF (just the middle sensor). I only switch to dynamic AF for birds in flight. It's in my experience the most reliable mode with the amateur cameras.

I also use AF-On, with the camera on AF-C.

Hermann
 
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