Any photography buffs

[Nickyboy]

Bought myself an Olympus SLR camera in January and am now looking for a new lens for it, currently have a 14-42mm lens and i'm looking at a 40-150mm zoom lens. Now i know nothing about this sort of stuff yet so am wanting to know in laymans terms how much of a zoom is this. I'm not doing any fancy photography but with my pending road trip in the US thought a half decent zoom would be good.

Any gen??

[mybrainhurts]

Try the photography forum...

[glazbagun]

Probably best to post in the photography forum for this one.

[Nickyboy]

Somehow missed that.

Can someone move it for me Ta

[miniman]

I guess you would term 40-150 a "mid range" zoom. 14mm (as per your other lens) is pretty wide angle, and something like a 300 or 400mm would be a powerful zoom. More important IMHO is the aperture range (e.g. it is probably f/3.5-5.6 across the range or something similar.

[Nickyboy]

Nice one ta, the arpeture is f4-5.6 whatever that means lol

[miniman]

It's the amount of light it lets in when fully open. It will be f/4 at 40mm and f/5.6 at 150mm. So at 150mm you will need a fair bit of light to get a good image. I think it would be termed a good "walkabout" lens - i.e. a good enough spread of zoom and I expect it is fairly compact.

[Nickyboy]

Yeah its not much bigger than the standard lens which is kinda what i wanted. At the mo its on eBay for less than half the shop price so i'll give it a whirl.

Cheers for the help

[molestrangler]

Hi Miniman,

Just bought a Nikon D50 body and a prime 50mm 1.8 lens. It's not even arrived yet but I want to get a lens that I can use for action stuff at race meets etc. I'm not a photo nut and don,t really have a clue, but, obviously, as it's not my main hobby, I really don't want to pay a fortune, is it realistic buying 2nd hand and what would you reccomend /

[miniman]

Not really clued up on Nikon kit, but my main criteria for action shots at racetracks would be fast autofocus (i.e. ultrasonic motor) and good reach. So depending on your budget:

Nikon 70-300 f4.5-5.6 G AF-S VR
http://www.warehouseexpress.com/product/default.as...
Gives you 300mm (effectively 480mm on a D40 body), silent wave motor (ultrasonic) and the vibration reduction should give you a stop or so of extra aperture in theory.

Sigma 28-300 f3.5-6.3 DG Macro
http://www.warehouseexpress.com/product/default.as...
Still 300mm, much cheaper, but no VR

If you can push the budget a bit further:

Sigma 70-200 f2.8
http://www.warehouseexpress.com/product/default.as...
Gives you f2.8, Ultrasonic motor, and add a 1.4x or 2.0x teleconverter and you get up to 640mm equivalent on a 1.6x factor body like the D40.

I have used the 70-200 and it is a top lens.

The daddy:

Nikon 70-200 f2.8 G AF-S VR
http://www.warehouseexpress.com/product/default.as...
Big money but if it is anything like the equivalent Canon 70-200 f2.8L which I have, it will be bloody lovely

[Simpo Two]

miniman said:

the vibration reduction should give you a stop or so of extra aperture in theory.

Not even in theory I'm afraid. It will reduce camera-shake but won't give you the faster shutter speed of a bigger aperture, so no better for freezing subject movement.

To misquote Carrol Shelby, 'There ain't no substitute for glass'.

Edited by Simpo Two on Sunday 1st June 23:08

[molestrangler]

Thanks for the input, talking today to a pal of mine who uses a Nikon and he is going to let me try some of his bigger lenses at the Lemans classic which should be an ideal chance to get a better feel for which direction I should scatter my money. How important is the vibration reduction option ?