calling Mr fizzwheel or anyone with DSLR knowledge

I brought a 55-200 mm lense for using at race tracks and for wildlife, its pretty good and extends onwards form the 18-55mm kit lense. Raf has an 18-200 mm lense for his nikon with is really good, you only really need one lense with you that way, but it is quite expensive. Means though that you dont have to fumble about changing lenses (Often, i'll start the day with the kit lense, then change to the longer lense, but I miss some things that way which is a PITA!)


Does sony have their vibration reduction built into the camera body? or is it in the lense like nikons?

Most of the lenses discussed here are just junk. The pick of the 70-300s is the Sigma and the Nikkor 70-300s, 18-200, 18-55 and 55-200 are all bad, but I guess usable for the casual snapper. They all suffer from poor build quality (18-200!), distortion, softness (particularly at the ends of their ranges and all of the 70-300s are bad over 200) and lousy contrast. The images above are about the quality that I would expect from these lenses.

There are better choices. Sigma makes a few nice lenses. The 70-200/2.8 is a good choice and for motorsports the 300/2.8 is a good performer at (what I consider) a reasonable price. It can also be mated to a 1.4 teleconverter for a slight, but still acceptable loss of image quality. At the short end the Sigma 18-50/2.8 is a good lens for its very low price.
Also, earlier advice not to get carried away with focal length is good advice. If 50mm or 55mm isn't long enough for general shooting then you're not close enough. Longer focal lengths are generally only required when there are physical constraints on shooting distance. Shooting long at unnecessarily long focal lengths tends to flatten images.

FWIW, I have a full arsenal of Nikkor Pro zooms and primes up to 600mm plus a range of Nikons Pro film and digital bodies and all of the other paraphernalia paid for by part-time event photography. At some stage I have also owned, however briefly all of the Sigma and Nikkor lenses mentioned in this thread purchased with cameras as Christmas gifts, but all of the lenses that I have criticised were flogged on eBay and replaced with something else.

Cheers

[fizzwheel]

Originally Posted by MattCo

If 50mm or 55mm isn't long enough for general shooting then you're not close enough.

Thats what I was getting at above. At Donnington you can be a fair distance from the track itself, and you've also got two layers of safety fence to content with an 18-55mm lens just isnt enough unless you like a small dot in the distance as a pic, and theres no way your going to zoom and crop that to get a decent pic with photoshop IMHO..

I have a Nikkor DX-70-300mm VR Lens, I am very pleased with it, to me the cost was reasonable, I dont know if I could justify paying anymore than I did for it. I think if I wanted bigger I'd just hire something for the odd weekend I was going to use it for.

I think a lot of amateur photgraphers cannot justify shelling out £800 for a lens. The lenses that Mattco suggested are worth over twice what the camera body is, an acceptable price for a keen amateur or a semi-pro but not for the rest of us.


This image, as the metadata will tell you was taken using a Sony Alpha 100 with the sigma lens I mentioned earlier. While you can pick the picture apart with how certain things could have been done better, the overall quality of it is good. This image was taken at the full focal length of the lens so all of its imperfections stand out. For a £200 I think it performs quite well.

In answer to Alpinestarhero's question earlier, the sony image stablisation is built into the body.

Originally Posted by ravingdavis

In answer to Alpinestarhero's question earlier, the sony image stablisation is built into the body.

pah! you beat me to it

so would you say this is anygood?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...=STRK:MEWAX:IT

or this?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/BRAND-NEW-SONY...item439ab0bdee

http://www.buyacamera.co.uk/xsearch....FaBb4wod2ElLmw

KWAK i would still choose the Sigma APO 70-300 if i wanted to spend under 200. I would also get it from a decent store such as Warehouse Express as they have a good returns policy. I have bought a lot of lenses over the years and have needed to return several due to defects so better be safe than sorry. if you go for a too cheap a lens your better off without one at all as far as i am concerned. The Sigma is not pricey at all for what it is and the close up feature is fun to use as you will be ble to stand back which getting close ups of butterflys etc.
http://www.warehouseexpress.com/buy-...a-fit/p1011618

so that one would suit all purposes?