Wildlife/Bird Lens Suggestions

[BW2020]

Hi currently use Nikon D5100 and Nikon 18-200mm superzoom lens mainly.
Looking for advice for a longer lens for wildlife/birds etc.
Thinking of Nikon 70-300 or Sigma 150-500mm?
Unable to afford the pro prices of £1,000 and upwards prime lenses etc!
Any thoughts or suggestions?

[graham_c]

hi Welcome to the forum
I have a Nikom 70- 300 lens, while it'sa great lens i think for birding you would be better looking at either a 400 or 500 lens. Hope this helps ... Graham

[wave]

i would look at the sigma too they do produce a good alternative

[Blitz Photography & Prod]

hi BW2020

like graham & wave have all ready said the 500mm is what your after i like to take some bird shots my self
and having more then a 300mm helps as for the sigma 150 - 500mm there are a few youtube video's were people have made showing the view you get with this lens
if you type in Sigma 150 - 500 in youtube or the 50 - 500mm you will see just how close you can get with there's both lens

hope this is some help all the best

Russ

[BW2020]

Thanks for the replies guys.
Will have a look at the sigma 150-500 and 50-500.
Will need to look at monopods for these.
Many thanks.

[Fred Sagen]

If your main consideration is cost (£ per mm focal length) then fixed aperture mirror lenses might be worth looking at.

You can occasionally pick up old manual-only reflectors cheap online and some of the Chinese imports aren't too bad.

You can augment manual-only lenses with pre-digital body-mounted tele-converters, as I have, mounting a Samyang f6.3 500mm on a Kenko Teleplus MC7 mounted on my D5100 or D40x.

The results aren't superb but with a little PhotoShop massaging they're acceptable to me.

Of course, if 1500mm equivalence on an APSC is a little extreme, you could consider the cheapest option of using a pre-digital manual-only tele-converter on your existing 18-200mm (Nikon's AF-S tele-converters cost as much as some lenses).

The lack of auto exposure with such a set-up is no real hardship as you can fine-tune the system while you wait for birds to land on your baited perch, for example.

I would recommend a tripod and remote control over a mono-pod for such a set-up, though.