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Bird Photography Setup

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by 06Honda on Wed Oct 01, 2014 11:27 am

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Have been using the Nikon D50 with the older 80-400VR for birding. Does a decent jobbut was considering buying the updated 80-400VR. Would this lense make sense to use on the D50 or would a newer body be a better option for bird photography. Here is a sample of a shot using my current gear in good light, handheld. My thought is to stick with DX.

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by E.J. Peiker on Wed Oct 01, 2014 12:17 pm

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The newer lens is dramatically better in every regard but you aren't going to get the AF performance the lens is capable of out of a D50. A D7100 has a first rate AF system and is an excellent bird photography rig with the 80-400, especially since you can crop it to nearly 2x and have that lens give you a field of view near 160-800mm and get 15 megapixel images at that size out of it.

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by 06Honda on Wed Oct 01, 2014 1:25 pm

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Thanks E.J. for the input, great points you make. I'll check ou the D7100 at my local shop to go with the update lense.

Paul

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by E.J. Peiker on Wed Oct 01, 2014 1:52 pm

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I failed to mention the downside, it only has a 6 image RAW buffer in DX mode and that goes up to about 9 if you are using the cropped mode I described above. If you are shooting JPEGs then this isn't a big concern. But on the bright side, you get a higher frame rate then with your D50.

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by OntPhoto on Fri Oct 03, 2014 9:45 pm

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06Honda wrote:Thanks E.J. for the input, great points you make. I'll check ou the D7100 at my local shop to go with the update lense.

Paul

I know someone who uses the D7100 and his photos are awesome looking. That 2x crop factor setting allows him to get great reach even with a 300mm lens. He only shoots jpeg but you'd never know it looking at his printed images. For a moment even I thought about getting the camera and a lens.

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