Looking for a lens to shoot distance!!!

Danielley10 · Mar 26, 2014

I am looking for a good lens to take photos at a distance. I have a Nikon 70-300mm f/4-5.6 AF but I am looking for something that gets me a little bit more. I am pretty new when it comes to distance shooting. Help!!

Derrel · Mar 26, 2014

Depends on what you want to shoot! At long distances during much of the year, environmental particulate matter (haze,smoke,pollen), or heat mirage; or water vapor (fog/seaspray/rain/mist); all those things mean that even a crappy lens is all you need.

Like for boats offshore, or bikini girls down the beach....there's often a LOT of seaspray, and no lens looks truly sharp: 500mm Preset :: 500mm f/8.0 Telephoto Lens :: Vivitar

OR

Opteka 500mm f/8 Telephoto Lens for Nikon Digital SLR - Newegg.com

Danielley10 · Mar 26, 2014

I live near the beach and wanted to shoot pictures of the wildlife, boats, etc. I am also wanting to shoot some more nature photos. Thank you for your help!

480sparky · Mar 26, 2014

I'm pretty sure most lenses will focus to infinity.

There's a few exceptions, though.

But if 300mm ain't getting you there, you can look into 400mm, 500mm, 600,, 800mm, 1000mm, 1200mm......

Gavjenks · Mar 26, 2014

Like for boats offshore, or bikini girls down the beach....there's often a LOT of seaspray, and no lens looks truly sharp:

Perhaps not, but horrible POS $75 500mm lenses will still definitely show way more chromatic aberration, for example. Plus putting up with manual focus and no control of aperture. And donut bokeh...

robbins.photo · Mar 26, 2014

If it were me l would wait till the new tamron 150-600 hits the shelves in a nikon mount.

Even if it is way more than you want to budget for this lens, the minute it does you'll see a flood of sigma and tamron 150-500 mm go up for sale on eBay

Sent from my LG-LG730 using Tapatalk

Derrel · Mar 26, 2014

You need to determine a budget. There are not many choices in long telephotos between inexpensive and expensive. Don't let Gav's "POS" comments mislead you. The simple, long-focus 500mm f/8 and 400mm f/6.3 refracting lenses have been around for decades, and are actually decent optically. I bought a manual focus 500mm f/8 pre-set lens a decade ago,and it was a lot better than I thought it would be. Keep in mind, Gav bought himself a POS 85mm manual focus lens recently, to save money...so, don't pay much heed to his comments on long-focus lenses--he's giving you a do as I say,not as I do mini-spiel here...

Mirror telephotos (also called catadioptric lenses) like 500mm f/8 lenses are decent. Light. And they are very short, and are easy to hand-hold successfully. Their bokeh is called donut (aka doughnut) bokeh, but sometimes that's not a big issue. Again, you need to figure out a budget.

The best part about the issue is you live in Florida; a place where there is often a LOT of light, which makes manual focusing easy, and keeps shutter speeds high. I took your area of residence into account in my first post.

robbins.photo · Mar 26, 2014

Derrel said:
You need to determine a budget. There are not many choices in long telephotos between inexpensive and expensive. Don't let Gav's "POS" comments mislead you. The simple, long-focus 500mm f/8 and 400mm f/6.3 refracting lenses have been around for decades, and are actually decent optically. I bought a manual focus 500mm f/8 pre-set lens a decade ago,and it was a lot better than I thought it would be. Keep in mind, Gav bought himself a POS 85mm manual focus lens recently, to save money...so, don't pay much heed to his comments on long-focus lenses--he's giving you a do as I say,not as I do mini-spiel here...

Mirror telephotos (also called catadioptric lenses) like 500mm f/8 lenses are decent. Light. And they are very short, and are easy to hand-hold successfully. Their bokeh is called donut (aka doughnut) bokeh, but sometimes that's not a big issue. Again, you need to figure out a budget.

The best part about the issue is you live in Florida; a place where there is often a LOT of light, which makes manual focusing easy, and keeps shutter speeds high. I took your area of residence into account in my first post.

I haven't tried one of the mirrored lenses on the digital myself, I did use one eons ago in my 35 mm days. Took a little bit of getting used to but once you do you really can get some good shots with them.

Gavjenks · Mar 26, 2014

Gav bought himself a POS 85mm manual focus lens recently, to save money

The 85mm is one of the sharpest lenses I own, is buttery smooth, goes to f/1.4 (with reasonable quality at that), and is built heavily. Dunno what you're talking about. It's cheap because it's manual focus and aperture. Not because it's low quality.

The Opteka, which I also own, is made by the same company, but is vastly more terrible, and I've never used it for anything serious the entire time I've owned it, because my (also not very expensive) 70-300 IS USM Canon lens is sharper even with a 500mm crop out of the middle of the image on the same camera.
And doesn't have donut bokeh.
And has autofocus.
And has more than one aperture (The largest of which is a stop faster at that)
And is a zoom.
And weighs less (maybe? Close if not, and less bulky).
And has less distortion.
And didn't make a horrible metallic grinding noise when you turned the focusing wheel (which doesn't have enough travel btw on the 500mm to be very precise)

It's not Rokinon the company or cheap lenses in general that are necessarily bad. It's THAT specific lens.

The 70-300 I'm talking about, btw, is only like $300 used. So you only would save $200 for all those drawbacks, versus saving $600 on an 85 1.4 manual for only the autofocus drawback (compared to a sigma AF 85 1.4).

TJC · Mar 28, 2014

Teleconverters are another option. They are a fraction of the cost of any telephoto lens.

Derrel has this spot on. Unless you have a specific need, bird photography for example, you are going to be spending a lot of money for a lot of aggravation.

I do quite of bit of bird watching. You need very little equipment to bird watch. A complete outfit includes a guide book, binoculars and a spotting scope. Usable spotting scopes start at around $600 and go up to about $5000. The biggest use of spotting scopes is watching sea birds and shore birds. Between the water vapor, heat mirages and blown sand, IMO the less spent on a scope the better. Of course the arguments there to spend all the money are the same as they are here - more money equals better quality etc etc. But money can't cut through a heat mirage and that's a fact!