Nikon wildlife lens

Bigvin

Bigvin

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Does anyone have any advice on a budget lens for wildlife on a Nikon D5000?

I've got a budget of around £800 at the minute and was thinking of

1. Sigma 70-200 2.8 plus 2x TC
2. Sigma 120-400 OS
3. Sigma 50-500 OS
4. Sigma 150-500 OS
5. Nikon 300 f4 plus TC
6. Save more money and buy a Sigma 120-300 2.8 plus TC

Obviously the ideal would be option 6, but that would take me quite a while to save up.

Not sure if 400mm is long enough, I currently use a Nikon 70-300 VR.

I feel a zoom would would be more flexible than the 300mm prime, but the IQ would suffer.

Not sure what differences there are between 3 and 4 apart from 100mm and price.

I'm going round in circles here and would appreciate any advice from people who have any experience of the lenses. Not bothered about buying S/H if there is another option available.

Cheers for any help.
 
Really depends on you budget.

The Nikon 300mm f4 AF-s plus a TC will produce really good results. I've used it with both 1.4 and 1.7 TC's.
 
PsiFox said:
Really depends on you budget.

The Nikon 300mm f4 AF-s plus a TC will produce really good results. I've used it with both 1.4 and 1.7 TC's.
Click to expand...

As I say, the budget is around £800 at the minute. Unsure about the flexibility of a prime lens when it comes to wildlife. Quite a few of my shots come from varying focal lengths at the minute.

Cheers for the reply. :thumbs:
 
I have a Sigma 150-500, and the g/f has a 300/4 + 1.4TC. I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "wildlife" but we use ours mainly for birds, so we can use all the focal length we can get.

The 150-500 is very convenient, being a zoom and has quite effective stabilisation. I normally stop it down to f/8 or so to get enough sharpness for me. A Sigma rep once told me it was the best/sharpest sample of a 150-500 he'd ever seen, but for all I know he says that to every customer. It does seem sharper than you'd expect from reading the reviews.

The 300/4 is insanely sharp, even wide open with the TC attached. It outresolves the camera's JPEG engine - we've got a picture of a fairly distant Jay, and if you view it at 100% all the detail's there, except the feathers on the wing edges break into blocks slightly. And this is a Large Fine JPEG (from a D300). It's also a fair bit lighter, and focuses faster (though it's not instantaneous). It's not stabilised, but for birds that's not a huge problem, as you normally try to have fast shutter speeds to freeze them in flight anyway.

Either of the 50-500 lenses are higher-end than the 150-500 and should be sharper.
 
Having used 3 of the six the 120-400, 150-500 and the nikon 300 f4 I still use the nikon and the other two have gone.
 
If you go for the Nikon 300mm f/4 make sure it's the newer AF-S version if you're wanting to use Nikon's own tc with it as the older AF-D model is only compatible with aftermarket ones such as the Kenko Pro range and in any case won't af on the D5000.
 
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