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?
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?
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