If you've shot with me for any length of time, you know that I prefer prime lenses to zooms, mostly because it helps me think more about composition. Primes also have the advantage of being lighter, faster, and generally smaller than their zooming cousins.
That said, there are times when your feet won't get you there, and zooms are undeniably handy for their convenience. I had the DX 18-200mm VR super-zoom and rarely used it, and I gave my DX 55-200mm (part of a trade+cash sale of the 18-200) to my sister with the d40. I opted to get this FX monster as the replacement.
I had forgotten how difficult it is to hand-hold slow lenses with long focal lengths. While the 70-300 isn't the heaviest lens ever, it takes this weakling two hands to shoot with, and my results are not great at speeds slower than 1/125. In fact, they probably aren't that great shooting that quickly, but at least they're reasonably sharp.
I'm extremely grateful for the VR and the high-ISO capabilities of the d7000: without them I would have regretted the purchase. The longer focal length means that personal movement is amplified against the subject: I could watch my heartbeat jitter the door 15 feet away. (Maybe I need to see a doctor about that.)
After a couple days of putzing around, though, I was able to get these kind of snaps:
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| 300mm, f/5.6 @ 1/400s, ISO 320, handheld |
I have done some post processing on this. I converted from raw using UCRaw, adding 1 2/3 stops of exposure compensation. I sharpened and stretched the contrast in the GIMP and cropped it for posting. If I'd had the presence of mind to think more clearly I would have shot aperture priority instead of program auto to gain a bit more sharpness (probably f/8 or so).
Overall I'm pretty impressed with how it's performed so far, but I am going to need a lot of practice to get anything good out of it for my trips.
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