Nikon 200mm vs 300mm camera lense?

Nikon 200mm vs 300mm camera lense?

1) FX or DX format
2) What sort of photos are you going to be taking?

What about them?

What are you asking?

Well, the 300mm lens can make things appear 1.5X as close as 200mm. Lenses that give good image quality at 300mm can be significantly more expensive than those that work well at 200mm. Some cheap lenses that zoom to 300mm could lose more detail to image quality deficiencies than would be captured by a better quality 200mm.

My personal rule of thumb is that you need a 2x difference in lenses to justify purchasing one. In other words, if you already had a 200mm lens, a 300mm lens is not going to get you much.

Since optics behave by the inverse square law, the degree of change between say 10mm and 15mm is going to be the same effect as changing from 200mm to 300mm as they are both 1.5x

A 1.5x change is borderline on significant in my view. If you would like a comparison, look at this web page at the different focal lengths. Compare a 200mm to a 300mm lens and you will see that there's not really a significant difference - noticeable, yes, but significant? Ill leave that to your judgement.

http://www.althephoto.com/concepts/lenses.php

Nikon has zoom lenses and primes covering that range and they go from decent budget offerings to excellent and very expensive and very heavy pro lenses. Like this 200mm f2 brute which weighs 3kg. and costs you about $5000. For less than a tenth you can get a 55-200 or 300 which weighs significantly less.

I bought Nikon 55-200mm f4-5.6G ED AF-S DX Nikkor Zoom Lens to complement the 18-55mm lens that came with my D50. The people who criticize this lens certainly have the right to their opinions but I don't feel they are keeping the price of the lens in perspective while reviewing the lens. One can spend thousands of dollars on a single Nikon lens. And to me, the fact that I can get a lens with great optics that's a little slow but is incredibly light for under $200 is nothing short of miraculous. If you would have told someone in 1968 that a lens of this quality would be available for such a low price, they would have laughed.