ROOKIE NEEDING BUYING ADVICE

[themightyjuice]

I'm in the market for a budget lens, ideally i'd love to get a good macro but as stated before i'm on a budget

I've also been looking into a semi decent zoom lens, right now my bag consits of a couple of kit lenses, Nikon 18-55 and 55-200.

I've been looking at the Tamron 70-300mm f4-5.6 Di with AF Motor and can't seem to find any decent reviews of it, so i thought i would come to the folks in the know.... you guys. Also thought about selling my kit lenses and going for a more versatile lens like the tamron 18-200mm and then buying a proper macro lens.

I've not been doing photography for long at all but now i'm getting the bug BIG time and i'd like to start investing in some decent kit for better variety of pictures.

Any help at all would be greatly welcomed

thanks.

 

[Snap_Happy]

Help is usually pretty forthcoming, but you have to post in the right place! This really belongs in the "Talk Equipment" forum, but there's a couple of things to bear in mind first:

1) Make sure you do a search first - the first telephoto lens is a common purchase, so scan the existing threads first already.
2) "On a budget" is not very specific - the lens you mention is just under £130 from warehouseexpress.com, so I'm presuming you're aiming around the £150 mark? What's your stretch budget? The reason I ask is that it is WELL worth spending the extra cash - a good quality lens is worth its weight [in both senses ]
3) What are you after taking photos of? Wildlife? Motorsport? Planes?

HTH, and please feel free to repost this in the "Talk Equipment" forum, having first done the trawl - you may find you can tag your question [if it's very similar] on the end of an existing thread - this often gets a better response, as all posters, including the OP will get notification that there's a new message!

 

[themightyjuice]

Help is usually pretty forthcoming, but you have to post in the right place! This really belongs in the "Talk Equipment" forum

I did post this in the talk equiptment forum but to no avail, thanks for posting back, when I said about having a budget, I was aiming to spend around the £150 mark, just can't really go above I'm afraid, it's actually my other half who is coughing up the dough for my birthday pressie. As I'd mentioned earlier I was just after some advice on my lenses. I don't know if it would be worth replacing my 55-200mm nikon kit lens for the 18-200mm tamron and then selling my 18-55mm kit lens to help fund a macro lens....

The photos I'm interested in are pretty varied, I love taking wildlife, landscape, and would like to get into portrait photos but I guess my main interest is macro. I'm still pretty new to all this so any advice from you guys is golden.

 

[akr]

you mention macro - you could try extension tubes eg kenko ones. However not sure if they work with the Nikon lenses you have, but if they do you could use them for Macro.

 

[themightyjuice]

How much do extension tubes differ from an actual macro lens? I suppose I mean how close can they get to the subject?
Sorry if that seems a really dumb and ignorant question.

 

[akr]

I've not had a macro lens to compare, I find you have to get too close with mine almost for bugs and the like, but am still v early days with them. The kenko ones come in 12,20 and 36mm which you can stack in any sequence, or not, so I've not yet explored all those options.

Have a look on flikr groups for what can be achieved http://www.flickr.com/groups/kenko_extension_tubes/