New lens, big difference

fmw · Sep 17, 2007

Hill202 said:
To the experts on here, this will be stating the obvious, but maybe it will help a beginner like me. I took the plunge and bought a Nikon 70-300 vr lens. What a difference in my pictures!! The blur is gone and the tripod is put away ( until its time for HDR). I read all the comments, good and bad about this lens and decided to try it out. Its on a D40 body and I could not be happier.

I originally purchased a package deal with the D40 with a 18-55 and a 55-200 kit lens. I could have done without the 55-200 lens. I can see still using the wide angle lens for landscapes ( with a tripod). I guess for me buying a body only camera would have made more sense.

I would recommend taking the tripod back out and working with it. All lenses behave differently at different apertures. Aperture is one of the three things we use to control depth of field, for example. Because you can hand hold some shots a couple of stops slower than you could before, doesn't change the basic behavior of camera optics. You haven't yet explored what the new lens can do. Some of the things it can do will require a tripod. Congratulations on the new lens.

Hill202 · Sep 17, 2007

You're right, I need to keep using the tripod. I took some pictures this weekend and quite a few had some blur. The ones I took with the kit lens were worse. I was deep in the woods and the lighting was not good. They looked okay on the camera but on the computer they looked terrible.

I really would like to find a wide angle AFS lens with vr in my budget. I was regretting the new lens this weekend as I was shooting landscape.

I was however shooting in manual to get the feel for making all the adjustments myself.

xfloggingkylex · Sep 17, 2007

Big Mike said:
The kit lenses get a bad rep. They really aren't all that bad. Especially for the price.

There are plenty of great pictures to be had with the kit lense, and it is the cheapest wide lens you are going to find.

Not to hijack this thread but here is an example of a picture using the kit lens. This is straight out of the camera with no editing at all.

But yes, switching to a higher quality lens will have immediately noticable improvements.