Advice plus where to try expensive lenses?

S

Steelmagnet

Messages
284
Name
Steve
Edit My Images
Yes
Hi all.

I shoot a fair bit of sports (rugby, golf and horse racing) and have been managing perfectly well with my consumer grade 70-300 VRII on a D700.

However, our little business has gone up a notch with passes to Somerset County Cricket and this gives me the perfect excuse to buy another pro lens. (I have the 24-70 f2.8 as well).

I need 500mm, but I could get away with 400mm and some cropping. I have a mental barrier when it comes to teleconverters but it seems I may have little choice.

Options are:

Nikon 300mm f2.8 plus 1.4 or 1.7 TC
Nikon 200-400 f4 (possibly with a 1.4 TC)
Sigma 120-300 OS f2.8 with a 1.4 TC
Nikon 70-200 f2.8 with 2.0 TC

Now the last two options are cheapest, but in the back of my mind I feel that I'd regret buying Sigma and that the last option is too much of a speed compromise. That last option does have a certain 'two lenses in one' appeal though. I'm aware that the Sigma is a great lens but it's not Nikon...

There are other alternatives such as the 500mm Sigma, so I'd love some opinions here, particularly from any sports pro's already shooting cricket.

The other question, and my main reason for asking, is advice on where to try these things. I can read reviews all day long but if I'm dropping £4-5k I want to have held the thing and used it for a bit.

Taunton camera shops don't stock anything like this standard of lens, and I have a feeling very few places do. I'm not keen on renting because I know I want to buy, so can anyone point me in the direction of somewhere that might stock the above, or at least get them in store for me with the assurance of a purchase?

Sorry for rambling a bit, but I know I'll get great advice here.

Cheers
 
I know you state you are not keen on renting, but I would have thought this would be your best option.

Try Lensesforhire.co.uk or here on TP. Not used them (yet), but they get good reviews.

If you had your shortlist for a week, you could really put them through their paces.
 
It's kind of you to reply, but to try even those four options would cost something around £700, a big chunk of my budget.

Surely there must be a big camera shop somewhere that stocks professional kit?

I'll go and have another search for such a shop...
 
Steelmagnet - have you done the budget? How much is your new sales outlet worth? You need to balance the sales with the costs over 2 years maximum. Are you going to be working purely to buy a lens? What quality does your market actually require? Can you add an f-stop in film speed and shoot on 400 instead of 200?

If you go to Calumet, they will rent you a lens to trial on the basis that when you buy it the rental is waived. So you only pay for the rental if you are trying it on to get a lens for a weekend for free! Genuine sales trials are treated as such.

For county standard cricket I would suggest you look at either the 400 f2.8 or 500 f4. A converter is optically matched to these professional lenses and you will see NO FALL OFF IN QUALITY with any of the Nikon converters. I had a 500f4 with 1.4x to give me a 700 f5.6 - you couldn't tell even wide open whether it was shot with or without the converter. Rest those fears.

You need to make a choice :-
400f2.8 with 1.7x = 680mm f4.5

500 f4 with 1.4x = 700 f5.6, slower and darker viewfinder

300 f2.8 with 2x = 600 f5.6 - as above, but 300 more flexible than 500 (and a lot lighter!)

What else will the lens be used for? That is another consideration. Long zooms are not of the same quality as a proper long tom.

Fixation would be another outlet I would recommend, but Calumet have stores in each corner of the country:
London, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh. Excellent service, even if you go overseas.
 
Thanks for advice.

In answer to the financial side of things I'm not worried about covering the cost of the lens. I can afford to buy one and if I get 10 years of pleasure from using it then that's good enough. I just want to buy the right lens.

That's not meant to sound smug, and I appreciate that I'm fortunate enough to be in that position. I just want to take great photos at the cricket ground, and sticking with existing kit will be a compromise.

Thanks for the converter info though, it will almost certainly influence my choice.
 
Steelmagnet said:
Taunton camera shops don't stock anything like this standard of lens, and I have a feeling very few places do. I'm not keen on renting because I know I want to buy, so can anyone point me in the direction of somewhere that might stock the above, or at least get them in store for me with the assurance of a purchase?
Click to expand...
What it seems you're asking for is to get four new lenses worth over £12k, play with them for a while, and then buy one, leaving the camera shop with three which are no longer new and can't be sold as new. I really doubt you'll find any camera shop which will agree to that.

As others have noted, Calumet will hire you a lens and then refund the hire price if you subsequently decide to buy the lens from them. However there are a couple of important drawbacks to this:
(1) their hire prices are pretty steep, so the unrefunded hire prices of the lenses you decide not to buy will be large;
(2) their selling prices aren't necessarily the best, and you would end up paying more than if you shopped around.
 
I don't think you need to rent/try any of the lenses, you just need to work out your subject distances.

I've only ever shot local cricket, not sure if county cricket uses large pitch sizes?

I my case, on a D300, 300mm for wider shots and adding a 1.4x TC for tighter stuff gave me reasonable results no problem.

Use a FX body like your D700, you need 400mm and then a TC. I'd really suggest going down this route rather than a 500mm, you can add TC's but you can't take them away.

So, you are left with the choice of the Nikon 400 2.8, its an awesome lens, you don't need to find that out for yourself. They are about 7k though...

Alternatively.... get a D300S and go with the Nikon 300 2.8... thats 4k. FX for daylight, outdoor sport is a bit of a waste of time to be honest, if you need the length, use DX.

Again, you don't need to find out how good the Nikon 300 2.8 is, its widely known as fully awesome.

The other zoom lenses you list aren't a patch on the Nikon long primes, sorry but they simply aren't. Also, I can't think of the advantages when you are always shooting long...

Buy once, buy it right. Cheaper in the long run.

Just my opinion as a regular long sports shooter...
 
Thanks for all of the advice. I have certainly decided not to buy Sigma and a DX body is something I'm also considering.

It might be a D7000 and not a D300s though.

Much appreciated.
 
Don't waste your money on an inferior body! You already have a brilliant camera, glass attaches to all of them - put your money into the lens, it will retain its value long after the body has been sent to obscurity. The cost of a converter is only £400 new (less used and there is nothing to go wrong with them) - how much is a camera body you are looking at...and how fast is the AF onit, and how fast is the shutter burst with a proper telephoto on it, and how fast and deep is the buffer?

Get the long telephoto set up that suits you best and shoot it on your 700 that you already know and have set up for your way of shooting. You can achieve the same thing as buying a DX camera by switching your 700 to DX mode if you want to - read the book to tell you how to. On my D3 it is a one button job, must be similar on the D700, they are more or less the same.
 
I've never used a D7000, but I do know the AF and the shutter lag are worse than the D300/S.

You can pick up a cheap low mileage secondhand one for not many pennies and the performance in terms of frame rate and AF is the same as the D700, which you are already familiar with.

Don't shoot DX mode on the FX body.... you start with 6mp and after some cropping there's not much left. The only FX body you can seriously run DX mode and still crop is the new D800, but the frame rate is too slow for action sports.

If money is no object, then slapping a 400 2.8 onto your D700 is the most obvious choice, but thats a lot of ca$h....
 
Again, thanks all. I was considering a second body like so many use, and clearly the D300s is the way to go.
 
desantnik said:
I've never used a D7000, but I do know the AF and the shutter lag are worse than the D300/S.

You can pick up a cheap low mileage secondhand one for not many pennies and the performance in terms of frame rate and AF is the same as the D700, which you are already familiar with.

Don't shoot DX mode on the FX body.... you start with 6mp and after some cropping there's not much left. The only FX body you can seriously run DX mode and still crop is the new D800, but the frame rate is too slow for action sports.

If money is no object, then slapping a 400 2.8 onto your D700 is the most obvious choice, but thats a lot of ca$h....
Click to expand...

But they are 6 damn good pixels. The D2H was used for posters and ads and DPS printing and that only had 6 in total. There is more than enough meat in a D700 on DX. You can take a D700 image up to A1 quite happily - how much cropping are you going to do for pete's sake - printed media doesn't need that much. They are running 1/4 page repro from less than 1mb now.:bonk:

Peple get hung up over th need for more mega dots - get the shot, the repro boys will figure out a way to print it, Genuine Fractels will take you up 400% and you won't know it, not in the finished printed form.

This is why I am not going to upgrade from the D3 to the D3s or 4 - I don't need to. The D3 produces more file size than any magazine will ever use - they throw away more than half the file info provided by downsizing it. All gettinng more does is drive the industry - you fill your computer faster, so you need a faster, bigger, flashier compuer...it all gets a bit much after a while. As a professional you need to take a step back and ask: "will I make any more money by having one?" The answer is generally, NO. If I get a new camera, Iwon't make any more money, I will still take the same crap pictures and get the same crap pay for them!:thumbs:
 
A question about this DX crop thing: Why?

As far as I know it just displays a crop frame within the viewfinder and records a smaller image.

I can't imagine why you'd want to do that unless you either desperately wanted the guide frame, or wanted to save disc space.

Am I missing something here because I can't imagine why anyone would use DX crop on an FX body when they could crop in PP.
 
Steelmagnet said:
Am I missing something here because I can't imagine why anyone would use DX crop on an FX body when they could crop in PP.
Click to expand...
DX crop mode is for when you're using a DX lens.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top