Nikon SLR Cameras

Are Nikkor 50-300mm lens okay for macro photography/ wildlife?

Guest
Guest

Right so i'm a complete newbie ar photography and i really love taking photos…
But you see my budget prevents me from doing so…
A while back i bought a nikon d3200 with 18-55mm VR lens
And now I'm thinking of buying some more lens. Eg: there was once a butterfly( a really nice one) and it was still
I wanted to take a picture of it then but my 18-55 didn't let me zoom further…
I need lens good enough for things such as that eg: wildlife, Insects, people in general and other stationary objects.
What lens is suitable for these criteria? For nikon

Frank
Frank

The Nikkor 50-300 would be the logical choice to add to your existing kit as far lenses offered by Nikon. You can zoom in much tighter while staying further away from your subject to get wonderful looking portraits, candids and macro-type shots.
You should take a look at Tamron's 70-300 too which should be on par with the Nikon 55-300 or possibly even sharper. Tamron has a reputation of offering a few lenses that out perform Nikon/Canon equiv for 1/2 the price.

fhotoace
fhotoace

Are you actually asking about the 55-300 mm Nikkor lens?

You need a macro lens like the Nikkor 40 mm, 60 mm, 85 mm and 105 mm macro lenses.

Zoom lenses are NOT macro lenses. A macro lens is a special flat field lens.

Shooting wildlife will require a lens that is at least 200 mm or longer, so a lens like the AF-S 18-300 mm VR, 55-300 mm or AF-S 70-300 mm VR would be what you need.

It is understandable for a novice photographer to try and find a single lens that will do everything, but it is not realistic.

Spend some time on the Nikon website looking at the available lenses and on the linked website to see what different focal length lenses actually "see"

Guest
Guest

No. It's not a macro lens.

True macro lenses tend to be prime lenses. Nikon sometimes calls them micro lenses - the rest of the photography world uses the term macro. "Micro-NIKKOR" is how Nikon labels those macro lenses.

EDWIN
EDWIN

First, no zoom lens is a true macro lens. In my opinion using the word "macro" in the description of a zoom lens borders on false advertising.

Second, in auto focus mode your 18-55mm zoom can close-focus to 11 inches. At 55mm that should fill the frame with an average sized butterfly. This is why its always important to read and study all instruction manuals whether for your camera or your lens.

A true macro lens would be the AF-S Micro Nikkor 60mm f/2.8G which is about $600.00 but will give you a 1:1 (life size) reproduction ratio - photograph a 20mm long ant and it will be 20mm long on your sensor.

keerok
keerok

No.

For macro shooting, you need a lens that's specifically labeled Macro. With Nikon, they use the term Micro instead.

Get a macro lens that can shoot at the minimum shooting distance you will be shooting from.

John P
John P

Lenses of that sort would be good for shy wildlife, but not so good for very small wildlife or jewellery ("macro"), because they do not focus close enough. Thre is no lens which satrisfactorily does both.