Broke my zoom lense - what shall I get now?

Soldato
Joined
27 Jul 2004
Posts
3,674
Location
Yancashire
My tripod fell over yesterday and went smack into the floor whilst my Sigma 70-300 was on, which took the full brunt and is now knackered (better that than my camera though I suppose, which is a Nikon D70 by the way).
So, I'm now in the market for a new telephoto lense, which I was thinking about anway (and no I didn't push it :) ) as this Sigma wasn't brilliant to be honest - was very slow focusing and really struggled in lower light - it's the non APO one that costs less than £100 now.
So, what shall I get to replace it? From what I can see there's the Tamron 70-300 that's cheap as chips, but got a very good review in a group test in a recent edition of Digital Photo mag, a direct replacement for mine, the APO version of mine which is about £60 more (how much better will this be?), or make a sizeable leap to something much better.

Problem is for a 70-300 you seem to go from a very reasonable £150 mark to a whopping £600, even for a Sigma with not much inbetween.

I'm almost contemplating something like the Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 EX DG which obviously has the advantage of being f2.8 through the whole zoom, but it's 600 notes which I'm not sure I can justify, and it only goes to 200 which isn't really enough. You can get a 1.4 or 2x converter to add to it though, but again that adds even more money.

I'm also toying with the idea of a more multipurpose lense such as a 28-300, I just don't know as I already have a very decent Nikon 18-70 DX ED, and I'm wanting to get a fairly decent 1:1 macro lense. Arrrrrrrrrrg.

So, any bright ideas or suggestions, and how much difference does it really make for a zoom (at max) to be able to go to f4 or even lower? Is it worth spending 3x as much?
 
Last edited:
you can get the sigma 70-200 for £465. the 1.4x TC is usually around £100-120.

if i was you, I would get the sigma 70-200. and also get nikon 50mm f1.8
 
nolimit said:
you can get the sigma 70-200 for £465. the 1.4x TC is usually around £100-120.

if i was you, I would get the sigma 70-200. and also get nikon 50mm f1.8

Hi nolimit

£465? Is that second hand? Can you link it (OCUK don't sell this so would that be ok?)

Thing is I don't think 200mm is long enough, and if you add a converter doesn't that slow it down to f4 or 5? If so you may as well get something like a Sigma 135-400 APO, f4-5.6. Have found a great price for one of these (only £358 new!)

Have also found a Tokina 80-200 f2.8 which looks similar to the Sigma 70-200 and is £498. Anyone any thoughts on Tokina lenses?

Is the Nikon 50mm 1.8 a true 1:1 macro lense by the way (I don't know a huge amount about macro...)
 
i can't link the website and its brand new.
if you do a search on google tokina 12-24, you will find 1 website underneath this message "Product search results for tokina 12-24".

The store is based is in HK, they cover tax & shipping.

the 50mm f1.8 is nice for portraite and indoors, not for macro.

when you attach the 1.4 TC it becomes f4.

I read that the 135-400, is soft and slow and also u need to set it at f8 to get sharper images.
 
Last edited:
nolimit said:
Which tripod do you have?


It's a decent Manfrotto one (can't recall the exact model) - worth about £80

Not really sure why it toppled to be honest, not good is it...
 
Back
Top Bottom