Upgrading camera equipment

[petemellor]

My fiancee is very into wildlife photography and a few years ago i bought her a canon eos 350d, she has since purchased a sigma 75-300mm zoon lense. She wants a greater zoom facility on her camera, my knowledge on this is none existence so i was hoping someone could point me in the right direction. Obviously with saving for a wedding the budget is a bit tight but any help would be greatly received, cheers.

[GTH]

Like most things, it depends on your budget Pete. Some idea of that would help ?

Geoff

[DanJeffery]

I love my Canon 100-400mm but I'm glad I bought it when prices where lower. Not a lens for a tight budget. If this is too expensive I hear good things about the Sigma zooms that go up to 500mm. I presume she wants a zoom rather than just a fixed prime at longer than 300mm? I find the zoom of the 100-400 makes it far more versatile than a prime.

[big bill]

Hello Pete ,you could try looking on that well know auction site on the web some good deals there.
I have the Sigma 170-500mm lens


these were taken with it bought from the site,the lens you could look at is the Bigma Sigma 50-500mm lens or the 150mm-500mm lens both are used quite alot on this site by photographers especially the 50-500mm.
and give good results,if you do not wish to use the auction site I would shop around for the best price,but for bird photography this is the lens that you should be looking at to help you get decent images.
Best of luck and Welcome to the site

[acherontia]

There's nothing beats good field craft and getting close. The longer the focal length, the more the image will deteriorate - even if you spend a fortune. Plus - as your partner is a female this may affect how much she's able to cope with toting and quickly manoeuvering a really big lens. Personally, I wouldn't go much over 400mm but if you could get your hands on a 300mm f2.8 it would stand a 1.4 converter and still be manageable. Big lenses can be great for distant subjects if you can set up in a static situation with a tripod (or you have good incredibly steady arm strength) but they can be restricting in that you can't shoot 'from the hip' as it were. Being quick can count for a lot when photographing wildlife

These are with a 300mm f4 - and getting close.







Hope this helps!

Acher

[Geoff F]

As others have already mentioned, going bigger isn't cheap. Any worthwhile lens at 400 mm or larger will cost somewhere between £700 and infinity!

They are also rather heavy and cumbersome; and really need a tripod to produce sharp images. Lenses with Image stabilisation, in variable forms, do help with hand holding but nothing beats a tripod at these lengths. You also need good light for a large zoom; most of them don't perform well with the aperture wide open.

But if you can afford it, and she is happy with the weight, any of the previous recommendations are good. I use the Sigma 150-500.

I wouldn't recommend getting a converter to increase her current lens. They only work well on prime lenses or the really expensive zooms.

The cheapest solution, which has already been suggested, is to sneak closer to the subject.

[DanJeffery]

I completely agree with Acherontia about the priority being to get close. I started looking into buying a teleconverter and ended up buying a chair hide!