Hi all, I recently bought myself a Nikon D7000 as well as the 28-300VR lens. I came over from Pentax, but don't have a lot of experience with wildlife. On the end of my drive from Seattle to San Francisco I stopped at the Vallejo Marsh in CA this morning to hop out and test the new gear since there was waterfowl galore plus lots of shorebirds hanging out. The attached shot is a JPEG that I have not done any post-processing to, but I am really happy with the result. It is a pretty serious crop and to my eye still looks pretty sharp (except the motion blur on the wing tips). I can definitely see how those 16mp come in handy with big crops! The 28-300 seems to turn out a nice result for such a large zoom range in such a compact size. Cheers -Loren
Excellent shot - looks sharp to me, and I love the reflection. I enjoy my D7000, and you can go to pretty high ISOs with very little noise, and the ability to crop quite hard. It's a lovely camera. Unfortunately you may often find that 300mm isn't long enough for birds without at least a 1.4 converter. I don't know if the 28-300 works with that or not. Well done!
Thanks guys! I definitely found your sentiment to be true...300mm just wasn't that long! I got pretty close and still had to crop hard. It looks like the Nikon teleconverters don't work with my 28-300 lens either which is a bummer, but birding isn't what I bought the lens for anyways. (for perspective, attached is the original frame) Based on the prices of the serious tele lenses and my college student budget it doesn't look like I'm getting past 300mm any time soon! -Loren
