Advice on Nikon D 80/18-200 vr

[Martin Beacon]

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

[Don Hoey]

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

[Martin Beacon]

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

[Gidders]

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

[hbreder]

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.