nikon 80-400 or sigma 120-400 ?

[brookers]

hi guys, need a longer lens for shooting mainly birds and wildlife. thinking of buying either the nikon 80-400 f4.5/5.6 VR AFD or the sigma 120-400 f4.5/5.6 DG OS HSM. been down to my local camera shop and had a play with the sigma and quite liked the feel of it, when i asked there opinion on which lens was best they said the nikon but i read a post on here the other day which said the nikon was the worst lens they ever made !
i'd appreciate advice from anyone with experiance with either or both of these lenses.
thanks in advance .

[oskanoears]

Iv never used the sigma but the 80-400 nikon can produce some great results I have a friend using this for all her bird photos and she swears by it

[pete.rush]

Like canon's 100-400mm, the Nikon has its flaws, probably on par with the sigma, but that's not saying much.

The AF performance is acceptable on the D200 but don't expect it to be a speed daemon in this respect.

http://www.photozone.de/nikon--nikko...ab-test-report

http://www.slrgear.com/reviews/showp...ct/1184/cat/31

Both are soft at 400mm, both you'll need to stop down to f8 to get the best results as wide open their performances are good, so you'll need very good light to get the best from either of these lenses. The sigma 150-500mm, 50-500mm also suffer from this and autofocus speeds are slow.

Better to go for either the 120-300mm f2.8 or 100-300mm f4, 2 of sigma's better performers. I think Nikon's 200-400mm f4 is probably outside the budget you would want to pay

Peter

[barneyrubble]

Shameless plug for absolutely mint condition 80-40 VR

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/for...d.php?t=155544

[brookers]

thanks pete, do you think the 150-500 would be sharper at 400mm than the 120-400 ? as i would be buying it for the longer end of the range, cheers !

[Martyn...]

The 80-400 Nikon is fine, it has a few limitations but it is not as poor as some of the stuff on the internet would have you believe, however the better option IQ wise would be the 300 f4 AFS Nikkor, plus the 1.4 Nikkor TC.

[brookers]

i think your right martyn, that combo has got to be the best IQ for the money. just dont know if i could do without the zoom, ive never had a large prime !

[barneyrubble]

I've seen some cracking results with the 80-400.

I don't always go by the MTF charts and all the naysayers personally. For example, a lot of people slag the 120-300 F2.8, but it's an absolutely cracking lens for both range and price/ Sharp as a pin wide open too.

[pete.rush]

Originally Posted by brookers

thanks pete, do you think the 150-500 would be sharper at 400mm than the 120-400 ? as i would be buying it for the longer end of the range, cheers !

If you can guarantee clear skies and fantastic light then these budget zooms from sigma will get you some great shots, but like most zooms, to get the best you'll need to stop down an f-stop or 2, as most are soft at 400 or 500mm. As for the 50-500 or 150-500mm lenses, their really only 450mm lenses and f6.3 at 500mm (cheats camera into thinking it's f5.6), so even though the camera thinks your at f5.6, you're really at f6.3 and when playing with higher shutter speeds this could be a problems in average to poor light. Being 3rd party lenses, their autofocus speeds aren't anything to right home about, you'll have to adapt you shooting technique to compensate for the focus delay (if you're taking a series of images (burst) one after another, then you could be throwing away quite a few soft shots because the camera/lens combo focus does catch up between shots), another lens to look at is the sigma 80-400mm, acceptable performance, but again some adapting of technique is required. Unfortunately budget is a big nail in the coffin show stopper and something like the nikon 200-400mm f4 is just too far out of our reach to maybe justify spending the $$$, some compromises have to be made.

[brookers]

thanks for the replies pete, much appreciated.