Lens and equipment advice

[944gav]

I have had a Nikon D40 for a while now and have the 18-55 f3.5-5.6 and 55-200 f4-5.6 lenses that I bought as a kit. My birthday is in a few weeks and my wife has offered to buy me some things for my camera. I was considering a longer reach lens. Would a lens such as the Nikon 70-300 give much more reach or would I be better going for something like a 200-400? Would a teleconvertor give decent results with the lenses I have? I know that I am restricted to AF-S or equivalent with the D40 unless I manually focus.

For other equipment, I already have a bag and memory cards so was thinking of a tripod and maybe a polarising filter. Any other suggestions?

[RobDickinson]

A Polariser is a must, as is IMO a tripod.

I wouldnt look at a teleconvertor unless you had some good longer fast glass to start with, it wont work with cheaper consumer zooms.

Dont know nikon lenses that well but the 70-300 VR seems a pretty good high end consumer zoom, the 200-400 is a pro(?) end lens and expensive?

Depensd totaly on what you shoot or plan to with it. And where from.

[andy_quantum]

I got that 70-300 a few weeks ago. Nice lens, bit chunky but certainly does what it's supposed to. £349 @ Jessops

With everything on (VR, Active and Auto Focus) it's a little clunky. I found shooting through the fence at Donington a bit of an issue at full zoom, but I got the hang of it in the end.

As Rob said, depends largely on what you're shooting. Here's an example of a shot I took over the weekend with it, taken from quite a way back and through a fence. The blur is as it came off the camera, I've only adjusted levels and saturation for this shot

Exposure: 0.022 sec (1/45)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 300 mm



If you want to take pics from quite a way back and dont mind a bit of fiddling then it's fine.

I also spent some money on those cheap converter filter things, which arent too bad on a D40. Also bought a 50mm prime which while it's manual focus only actually produces better results re depth of field on the D40 than on the autofocussing D80

Edit - I forgot to say that a monopod wouldnt be a bad plan, or a tripod as earlier mentioned. And judging by the amount of dust I picked up, some cleany stuff is always going to get used

Edited by andy_quantum on Tuesday 26th February 20:12

Edited by andy_quantum on Wednesday 27th February 08:16

[beano500]

944gav said:

200-400

Every home should have one..... (and a couple of TCs)

No, if you're after longer reach, and the budget would stand it, and you're not going for one of the pro heavyweight telephotos (which would need a hell of a learning curve on the technique) your main contender would be a 300 F4 AF-S (to which you could add a TC14 later on I suppose). Even that would be a helluva learning curve to get the best from I suspect!