BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fozzybear" data-source="post: 1624107" data-attributes="member: 69297">I have a Sigma 150-500, Nikon 70-300VR and a Nikon 300mm f/4 (old style AF version that I use with a Kenko 1.4x Pro 300 DG  teleconverter). The Sigma is the weakest of the three, I am on my second copy and although it is ok and does get you to 500mm I find the results lacking in detail and can be a little 'bloomy'. Some of the problems I've heard attributed to needing to get used to such a long lens but I'm used to getting pretty high quality heavy crops from the 300mm prime with teleconverter (which would be 420mm) and probably is a combination of the two but I'd say it's more down to the lens than technique. It's also a huge thing and makes a wildlife walk a lot less enjoyable for me just because of it's bulk. I use it only very rarely.The 300mm prime and T/C (out of your league new perhaps but my second-hand 300mm was £340 from ebay) gets you to 420mm which is less but the lens is far, far sharper and suffers from much less image distortion so you can crop in and get detail where on the Sigma you'd get a slightly mushy image. It's still quite a bulky setup to take on a walk, you certainly know it's there, but it much more manageable than the Sigma.The 70-300VR is my everyday lens, it doesn't have the quality of the prime but it is flexible because of the zoom, it focuses close enough to allow me to get fair shots of insects, the VR allows me to shoot handheld in lower light than the prime and the image quality I find good even cropped very heavily. It's also compact and light so perfect for walking. It's not going to be very good if you are always shooting distant birds from hides or need ultimate quality but for a general walkabout wildlife lens I find it a good choice. These are some cropped shots taken with the 70-300, some heavier than others, as you can see you do get a loss of fine detail from cropping hard but it depends on your needs and what you want to get out of the photography really:<a href="http://www.birdforum.net/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/258451/ppuser/69297" target="_blank">http://www.birdforum.net/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/258451/ppuser/69297</a><a href="http://www.birdforum.net/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/254572/ppuser/69297" target="_blank">http://www.birdforum.net/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/254572/ppuser/69297</a><a href="http://www.birdforum.net/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/251588/ppuser/69297" target="_blank">http://www.birdforum.net/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/251588/ppuser/69297</a><a href="http://www.birdforum.net/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/250000/ppuser/69297" target="_blank">http://www.birdforum.net/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/250000/ppuser/69297</a><a href="http://www.birdforum.net/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/247678/ppuser/69297" target="_blank">http://www.birdforum.net/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/247678/ppuser/69297</a><a href="http://www.birdforum.net/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/221432/ppuser/69297" target="_blank">http://www.birdforum.net/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/221432/ppuser/69297</a>The last shot (of the Goldcrest) was cropped rather hard and was taken in very dingy conditions in a wood, as was the Wren shot. You can see that cropping in does mean that detail can look a bit 'thick lined' but it still produces reasonable images, at least in terms of my personal needs! I've a few shots taken with the 70-300VR from hides at Cley looking across at distant birds but they're not on BF, here's a couple taken with my old D80:<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulforsdick/2737717415/" target="_blank">http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulforsdick/2737717415/</a> - larger size <a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3260/2737717415_f98a1dbb6e_o.jpg" target="_blank">here</a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulforsdick/2604483605/" target="_blank">http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulforsdick/2604483605/</a> - larger size <a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3095/2604483605_ee0962008f_o.jpg" target="_blank">here</a>and with the D300 at Titchwell:<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulforsdick/3627793585/" target="_blank">http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulforsdick/3627793585/</a> - larger size <a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3652/3627793585_5375371857_o.jpg" target="_blank">here</a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulforsdick/3624827534/" target="_blank">http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulforsdick/3624827534/</a> - larger size <a href="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2478/3624827534_235768dc81_o.jpg" target="_blank">here</a>What it comes down to is what you want out of your photography - if you want the photography to be the reason for going out then you might well want to take a big lens but if you want to birdwatch 'and' do a bit of photography then you might feel encumbered by carrying around a large lens. If you get the Sigma you might find you get on better with it than I did, but you're likely to find it takes some work to make the most of it and even then you really need bright sun to do that because of the small aperture and need to stop down to maximise sharpness. I personally would prefer a slightly shorter lens of higher quality and crop in than a long lens that produces poorer images.</blockquote>

Verification