Advice on Lens for Nikon D40

[briar rose]

Hi guys, I've been told that I can have a new lens for my camera for Christmas , so I thought rather than go in blind and waste my money, I'd ask advise, the sort of lens I'd like is one that will get me up close to wildlife, without actually being up close, if you know what I mean, I think the budget will be about £300, but if the lens is a bit more it wont matter too much I can always add to it, thank you

[big bill]

hello briar rose I have the same camera and looking at another lens,what do you have at the present time?
My longest is the 200mm 300mmequiv on 35film been looking on Ebay and because of the D40 setup you will lose all auto focus setup unles you go for the AF-I or AF-S lens and these lens are expensive ,if you are happy with using manual focus you can pick up 300mm lens 450mm equiv to 35film on ebay for about £75-£90

[briar rose]

Thank you Bill I've only got the camera a couple of weeks ago for my birthday and the only lens I have with it is the basic kit lens 18-55mm (I think, without checking) so all this is very new to me, I think at the moment I'd have to get a lens with autofocus as I'm still learning.
From your reply do I gather correctly that a lens is more powerful on a digital camera than on a film camera, if that's right that can only be good
Which lenses are the best to get, the Nikkor or Tamron, I've not seen any Nikon ones, or are the Sigma lenses any good.
Christine

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by briar rose

Thank you Bill I've only got the camera a couple of weeks ago for my birthday and the only lens I have with it is the basic kit lens 18-55mm (I think, without checking) so all this is very new to me, I think at the moment I'd have to get a lens with autofocus as I'm still learning.
From your reply do I gather correctly that a lens is more powerful on a digital camera than on a film camera, if that's right that can only be good
Which lenses are the best to get, the Nikkor or Tamron, I've not seen any Nikon ones, or are the Sigma lenses any good.
Christine

lens manufactuers split into two some such as nikon, canon, olympus etc only make lenses to fit their own lens mount so of these you need only concern yourself with the nikon (which are nikkor by the way)

other manufactuers such as tamron, sigma, tokina etc are known as third party manufactuers and make their lenses for a range of lens mounts including the nikon

lenses from any of the big manufactuers should be fine (though i'd give vivitar/cosina a swerve as their build quality is shockingly bad)

Lenses appear to be longer on some dslrs due to the crop factor of the sensor (we have had a long debate recently about whether this is magnification or crop elsewhere and i aint going there again) thus your D40 has a (i think) 1.6 cropped sensor (ie it is 1.6x smaller than a 35mm frame) so lenses will appear longer by a factor of 1.6 - e.g a 300mm will give the same view as a 480mm would on a 35mm frame

Now as to what lens to get - I'd tend to advise you to get a mid range telephoto such as a 90-300 or 70-300 (I'd stay away from the huge range ones like the 28-300 as they tend to suffer distortion) - i'm a canon user so i'm not sure what nikon have available but there must be one , while both sigma and tamron make 70-300s for under 200 notes

that should get you reasonably frame filling shots of larger wildlife and/or that which is relatively tame or can be approached to a relatively short distance

If you want a longer lens than 300 the price ramps up sharply

you can get a sigma 135-400 for arround 300 notes

or a sigma 170-500 (colloquilaly note as the little bigma) for arround 400

a sigma 50-500 (the bigma) in the region of 500-600

a tamron 200-500 for roughly the same price

or a nikon 80-400 with VR (vibration reduction) for in the region of �1k or a sigma 80-400 with OS (optical stabiliser - essentially the same thing as VR) for arround 800 notes.

All the prices above are for shop bought products - you can probably do a bit better on the net or via ebay traders.

There is also the option of buying second hand - however note that some of the older third party lenses are not digital compatible , and also that as a beginer you would do well to take someone who knows their cameras with you to examine the goods to ensure they are in propper working order.

hope all that helps

[briar rose]

Thank you eeyore for all the info, you've certainly given me something to think about, it'll take a little while and a few reads for it all to sink in properly but I do have till Christmas , I did point out a lens that was over £6000 and was told not very politely that I couldn't have it obviously I'm not sure yet which lens to get, but I'd rather spend a little bit more and get quality, rather than something that's cheep and doesn't do the job I want it to.
The problem I'm having at the moment with all these numbers is going up from a point and shoot to DSLR is that with my p&p, it said 4x optical zoom and 4 x digital zoom so it had 16 x zoom, now I have no idea what 200mm or 300mm is, but I'm learning
Christine

[big bill]

Hello Christine I know the problem you are having i bought the twin lens kit and the 55-200 mm zoom lens supplied although a good optic is lacking in getting close to the subject especially bird photography The pics I took I was about 4-5 ft away from my feeding station using this lens to get a decent pic.
This is the problem with the Nikon D40 and the D40x is the lack of lens that offer the full benifits such as Auto focus you can buy others but would have to do without auto focus and focus manually.
However did a search for you and you can get a lens that is fully compatible and you do not lose any of the Auto focus and such like and is listed below and comes with the vibration reduction (image stabilizor) its priced at about £399.00 and should be available now and its also a Nikon lens

the AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED

Hope this has helped you all I have to do is sweet talk the other half now so I can get an early christmas present

[briar rose]

Thanks Bill, you're a star that sound just what I'm after and not too much more than my budget, maybe I can ask my sons for the extra as their Chrissy pressie to me

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by briar rose

The problem I'm having at the moment with all these numbers is going up from a point and shoot to DSLR is that with my p&p, it said 4x optical zoom and 4 x digital zoom so it had 16 x zoom, now I have no idea what 200mm or 300mm is, but I'm learning
Christine

a standard lens (ie the equivalent of 1x zoom) is generally considered to be 50mm on a 35mm frame. so taking into account the 1.6 crop a standard 1x would be arround 30.5mm (though they dont actually make this length the closest is either 28mm or 35mm)

ergo on a 1,6 cropped sensor a 10x zoom would be 305mm (300mm being the nearest equivalent) 400mm would be arround 13x and 500mm would be a tad over 16x

however the performance isnt quite the same as a 500mm f5.6 lens has a larger maximum apperture than the equivalent 16x optical zoom so you get more light and the foccusing perfoms better

btw - i'd be inclined to forget the digital zoom on your compact- all that does is crop the picture and you can get the same effect by cropping the output in photo edditing software.

PS Bill has a point nikon saved money on the D40 by taking out the advanced focussing module so its not compatible with all third party lenses - best to check before you buy

[big bill]

hello briar rose if you go to this siteyou will get a PDF file of every lens that will fit and work with your D40 it shows you what functions you will lose which is mainly the auto focus
ftp://VPddC_HW:iDkHJMV_@ftp.nikon-eu.../lcm-En_02.pdf

[big bill]

Hello briar rose just had a look in jessops site they are selling AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED for £399 so it look like I will be joining you in a new lens for xmas cheeper than what I was going to do and buy another new setup as the D40 is a good camera its just getting the lens.
At least by helping you ,you have finally got me moving and finding what was out there thanks alot