Advice on Nikon D 80/18-200 vr
 

Hi all,
Just signed up here and wanted to introduce myself.
I am a keen bird photographer and am just about to launch into digital. I am leaning towards a Nikon D 80 and later possibly the 18-200 Vr if funds permit. Can anyone give me advice or point me in the right direction?
Tks
Martin

Hi Martin and welcome to the forum.

If you are thinking about the 18-200 as a general lens fine, but 200mm will be too short for birds. I don't photograph birds but I do have 80-200. For birds I think you are looking for something out to 300 or 500mm. Sigma seems to get talked about a lot or possibly Nikon 80-400VR.

Lots of bird photographers here though that can advise.

A bit of re-reading your post and what jumps out is ' later possibly '. That suggests you may initially get a kit with probably 18-55mm. If so then you would be covering a lot of the focal range twice.

Don

Thanks Don,
So how about the 18-200 as a general use lens and later the 80-400, which would need to be second hand for my budget? Do you think the 18-200 would be a good general purpose lens and is it best to have a filter permanently attached to protect the lens? tks
Martin

Hi Martin

Welcome to the forum. I would recommend having a look at the site www.slrgear.com where they have tested quite a range of the main manufacturers lenses and some of the independents. For the lenses they have tested there are interactive graphs showing the sharpness, chromatic aberation, vignetting and barrel/pincusion distortion for the lenses.

The 18-200 VR that you are considering does seem to exhibit considerable edge softness in the mid range until stopped down a bit. Compare it with the 18-70 which although doesn't have the zoom range or VR appears to have superior performance, is considerably cheaper and if often offered as a kit with Nikon bodies. If you want a bit more zoom range, as an alternative you might want to consider the 18-135 which appears to between the two both in terms of price and performance, although it still doesnt have VR

When I was looking for a digital SLR I looked at all these lenses and in the end decided that I wanted the sharpness of the 18-70 but with image stabalisation - remember its not good being able to hand hold the lens if the resulting images are not sharp enough, so I decided the Canon 18-85 IS was the lens for me and bought a 20D to go with it :D

Hi, I own a Nikon D50 with a Nikkor 18 -200mm VR lens and love it. It is really an all purpose lens and for professional bird photography may not be quite sharp enough. I recently photographed birds on Aruba, all taken without tripod. You can check them out on www.birdforum.net under my username hbreder. I am a newbie in bird photography - so take it for what it's worth.