Which lens please for Nikon D5300?

To be fair, looking at DxO's field maps for those lenses, the Sigma is generally very slightly sharper right in the centre of the frame and then drops off precipitously, whereas the Tamron has a little less central sharpness in return for more even sharpness across the frame. If that's an accurate assessment, there is a difference. (Personally I'd choose the Tamron based on that behaviour, if I absolutely had to get one of the two, but YMMV.) Both are clearly optically inferior to less "super" zooms, especially at the telephoto end, and neither are exactly "good", but they do seem to be different. The Tamron looks to have quite spectacularly ugly bokeh, which might put you off - I've not seen the Sigma's.

 

Personally I'd stick to the 18-105 or get an 18-140 and then crop the final image ("digital zoom") if I wanted a tighter crop and really couldn't live with changing lenses. But if you're not comfortable post-processing or want to get images shared quickly, that may be something you'd rather handle with a zoom.

 

Changing lenses - even if frequently - is worth the miniscule effort easily.

 

99% of the time I'd entirely agree with Wouter. There are, to be fair, a few exceptions:

 

• When flexibility and a very short time schedule is critical. This is why lenses like this are popular with "soccer moms" who need to cover both the near and far side of a football pitch as the action moves. Changing the lens would mean missing the action. Pros have more restrictive zooms, but bring more than one camera.
  
• When you're limited in what you can carry and access (say hiking somewhere hot with people who won't stop while you rummage in your equipment for a lens). My 28-200 was useful, in its day, for this. My hands were fairly full, and jiggling lenses on the side of a popular mountain may not make you friends.
  
• When changing a lens would expose the camera. I've used a zoom in Antelope Canyon to avoid getting sand in the body. I've used a zoom in the rain, snow or heavy wind where I'd be worried about opening the camera's throat.
  
• When physically restricted. An ex-colleague of mine has an arm with very limited strength and dexterity; she used the camera with her other hand, with the weaker hand used solely to add stability. Even zooming was tricky for her. Changing the lens would have taken a significant amount of time.
  

I'd still take a shorter zoom with better optics and crop the images in post-production, but there are reasons "just take two lenses" can't always work. Most of the time, though, it's the better solution for image quality.

 

My bigger concern is that these lenses won't really be of any more benefit over an 18-105 when it comes to landscapes, costume jewellery, or portraiture. More reach is occasionally useful during landscape shooting if you spot some wildlife (in which case you can usually change lens), and it might be a sports option (again, it depends on the sport), but the superzooms are so poor at the long end that they're not that much use.

 

I doubt you need anything beyond the 18-105 for landscapes, and if you do you might want a wide-angle; arguably it's a reason for the Tamron 16-300mm, because you get a little more reach at the wide end. (It also tests marginally better than the other two - review here - although still not "good" - but it's more expensive.) For portraiture and close-ups of jewellery, I really do think the 60mm f/2 Tamron macro or, say, a 90mm f/2.8 Tamron macro are going to be more useful - they'll give you subject separation that the zoom won't, and they'll both do a good job with extreme close-ups.

 

But maybe the reasons for the change of lens aren't quite as described?

I own and use the 18-105 routinely. The vast majority of images, including landscapes, in my portfolio were taken with that lens. It is my most-used lens, even though it is not the sharpest lens in my bag, due to its incomparable balance of size, weight, zoom range, and performance. I switch to dedicated macro lenses for close up work, to wide angles for architecture, and to longer zooms as needed. My go-to tele-zoom is the 70-300 VR Nikkor, a very good value for the performance offered. If you want to spend money, buy the 70-300 to go with your 18-105, and then add a set of extension tubes for macro. Given the variety of subjects, I strongly recommend you reevaluate your desire for a single, do-everything lens. If you are severely budget-constrained, buy the best tele-zoom you can afford, then add extension tubes for macro work. The whole point of a DSLR, even the D5300, is the ability to change lenses to fit the needs of the moment.

Hi thanks for your replies.

 

add extension tubes for macro work.

 

Where can I get those from please?

 

I might get the Tamron from LCE as I have been offered £70 for my Nikon lens. Where Castle offered me £60. In LCE I'm getting more reach for my money. Although the switch to stop the lens sliding out is more fiddly on the Tamron.

 

Are Tamron good for sharpness, or should i spend the extra money on the Sigma?

Where can I get those from please?

 

From WEx here, from Park here. You might also like to look at a close-up filter/close-up lens/dioptre (try Amazon), which screws onto the front of the lens, and might be cheaper and a bit less of a faff. Half-decent achromat ones are a bit pricey but not ridiculous, if you can live with some chromatic aberration then there are very cheap ones available. The best option is a true macro lens (which, as I suggested, can double as a good portrait lens), though.

 

Are Tamron good for sharpness, or should i spend the extra money on the Sigma?

 

Tamron in general are very respectable. I have one of their 90mm macros, I have their 24-70 f/2.8, they make a decent 70-300mm, for example. So are Sigma (these days).

 

These particular lenses, from both manufacturers, are absolutely not "good for sharpness", as we've been trying to say. The same would apply to the Nikkor 18-200 or 18-300. They're built to a budget, for convenience, to try to handle the very complex task of being capable at moderate wide angle and significant telephoto. Pro lenses don't try to do this (except for a few TV lenses), because you generally can't do it at a quality that professionals would find acceptable. This kind of applies even to the 28-300mm full-frame lens.

 

Have a look at the links to DxOMark in my previous post for the lenses you mentioned. In those tests, the Sigma is slightly sharper in the centre of the frame but very blurry towards the edges; the Tamron is a little less sharp in the centre, but keeps a higher average level of sharpness. I'd personally prefer the Tamron behaviour (even if it weren't cheaper), but you may prefer the Sigma.

 

I included the 55-200 on one of those links to show how much sharpness you're missing out on with a superzoom - and that lens, in turn, falls some way behind what something like the latest 70-200mm can do. (I appreciate that it's hard to judge absolute sharpness from DxO's coloured graphs, but hopefully it's obvious that when most of the visual field is marked bright red, that's a bad sign for quality.) The photozone review I linked to has sample images so you can decide whether you can live with the quality.

 

As we keep trying to say, you will not be happy with the sharpness, especially at the telephoto end, with either of the lenses you're considering. By all means get them for convenience, but trying to decide which is sharp is like trying to decide whether custard or blancmange is more bullet-proof. The best we can tell you is which option is less bad, and even then it's close. They'll both still take good photos, in as much as you can take good photos with a cell phone as well, but don't expect anything approaching optical perfection (or, generally, an improvement over your 18-105) from either.

 

I'd still quite like to know what you want the 105mm-250mm range for, because we might be able either to point you at a better option, or at least tell you why these lenses will or won't work for your needs. There are perfectly good reasons to want that range, but none of them were stated at the start of the thread!

I'd still quite like to know what you want the 105mm-250mm range for, because we might be able either to point you at a better option, or at least tell you why these lenses will or won't work for your needs.

Hi, I'm also with a resue team called serve On www.serveon.org.uk and I take pictures of their training excercise's. Sometimes they go to Hayling Island and I sometimes haven't got the reach to photograph them when they are on the water.

It seems like the times you need the reach are distinct different moments from the times you need the regular range. So, since you insist on getting a sharp lens, why insist on a superzoom? Why not simply add a lens like the Nikon 70-300VR or Tamron 70-300VC to the 18-105 you already own? You get much better performance for the same money.

 

Otherwise, I can only repeat: if you want a superzoom, it doesn't matter which brand really. They're all equally compromised, so there is not much point in asking which is the sharpest.

Thanks very much, I've seen a 70-300 at £70 in Castle cameras.

I would not recommend those cheap 70-300 options: most likely they will not autofocus on your camera, and they're optically also rather weak. Check for the Tamron 70-300VC lens (the VC part is important) - available at the store you mentioned, but I think it can be found at better prices: Tamron SP AF 70-300mm f4/5.6 Di VC USD for Nikon.

Thanks for clarifying, Louise. As Wouter says, if the longer reach is for occasional use (and it does seem to be), I think we're all advising you that a dedicated longer zoom would be a better option. There was a generation step in 70-300mm lenses a few years ago (early 2000s) where they suddenly got appreciably better. Very cheap options are often from before that period. Also, I suspect you'll find VR (or VC as Tamron calls it) useful in a longer lens.

 

The Tamron that Wouter mentions is well-known for being a good option for the money, and is about the price (£330 at the first place I looked) you were considering for your other lens (although obviously you now probably shouldn't be trading it in!) Nikon also have a new "70-300mm f/4.5-6.3 G ED DX AF-P VR" that happens to be exactly the same price, and has had good initial reviews. It's slightly slower than the Tamron (f/6.3 vs f/5.6), but it's also half the weight, if that matters to you. (There's a slightly cheaper version of the Nikon without VR, but I'd argue you probably want that.) Nikon also have a new full-frame AF-P lens, which is supposedly very good, but a lot (£750) more expensive. All these Nikons are relatively recent, so may not have been reviewed in detail.

Late to this party, but I'd add a couple of things:

 

First, the camera in question has a pretty dense sensor, and although it's best, of course, to get your shot right in the first place and not to crop, it is possible to crop that image quite a bit and still stay sharp. If the choice is between a shorter lens that's very sharp and a longer lens that is not you might find you're better off shooting the short one and cropping, even severely.

 

I find VR (or whatever else it's called by other mfrs.) very useful in a telephoto, and unless you're relatively unconcerned about high ISO noise, I'd consider it pretty much a must.

 

With regard to zooms at the ~ to 300 level: I've seen results with the AFS-VR 70-300 zoom (that's a full frame one) and they're very good. I gather the older, non-vR G zoom is a dog, as well as having no AF on the lower end cameras. On the other hand, the old 70-300AFD, which also does not AF on the D5x00 family, is optically pretty good, despite lacking AF and VR. I have one of these, which I used on an F4 and occasionally have tried on digital. If you get it steady and focused, it's good and sharp. The 55-300 DX lens is optically decent but not robust, and its focus is annoyingly slow. I have this one, and it does OK, but the AFS-VR 70-300 focuses (quite literally) twice as fast, and more reliably. It's bargain priced, though, and works fine if you're not chasing difficult moving subjects.

 

If you're satisfied with 18 mm. at the wide end, I don't know if anyone has mentioned the Nikon 18-140 lens. This one is not cheap, but it's nice and sharp, reasonably compact, and makes a very good all-round zoom if you don't mind its being a bit slow, as most such lenses are.

Nikon has two versions of AF-S 18-200mm VR. I have looked trought the older one with D7000 and did not notice anything unusual in the viewfinder for variable aperture zoom.

 

If I had 18-105mm nikkor, I likely would not part of it for 60 or 70 pounds.

 

If You go crazy and this is boating thing, Your dream zoom might be 80-400mm AF-S VR.

 

I looked at the sar group site. Noted that images appear high contrast and tightly cropped. Maybe look into environmental portrait style. 35mm lens and 1/60ish shutter time for motion blur. For site design, there may be too many elements and repeated imagenary. Talk to site designer to cut number of elements and images.

I believe there's very little difference between the two versions of the 18-200 except for the addition of a zoom lock on the newer one. I'm not sure how much softness you'd expect to see down a viewfinder. Any of these lenses is fine if you're printing a 6x4 - it's if you might want a big print or want to zoom in on-line that you'll see the softness!

 

For zooms, I can vouch for the 200-500mm (or the Sigma Sport 150-600mm). It's a bit big, but it's cheap for what it is - and substantially cheaper than the 80-400. Still a bit more than we're looking at for the 70-300mm, though.

Hi I'm considering the Sigma as been told it deals with temp change better then the Tamron.

"Hi I'm considering the Sigma as been told it deals with temp change better then the Tamron."

 

- Who told you that? Because I suspect they simply made up that little factoid.

 

I've had lenses from both Sigma and Tamron in the past, and have had many bad experiences with Sigma. IME Tamron lenses have better optical performance and are better value for money.

 

 

The above is a shot taken with my Tamron SP 70-300 VC zoom @ 300mm. The bird was quite tiny in the viewfinder, and the quality of the lens allowed this tight crop to be made.

Sigma used to make a lot of budget lenses - and lenses designed down to a price trends to have compromises. I've had a focus mechanism failure on a Sigma macro (the replacement has been fine), but I've had no reason to doubt my other Sigma lenses. My Tamrons have also been fine. Both companies used to have a reputation for being more prone to failures than on-brand lenses, I believe, but I also believe both have made significant efforts to improve things.

 

Is the temperature change thing because of Sigma's "thermally stable composite"? That's Sigma marketing for "plastic"; I wouldn't worry about it.

 

Dpreview have reviewed both lenses, I notice, and their reviews compare them. They note that the Sigma has better autofocus and better close focus (although it won't compare to a dedicated macro lens).

 

They claim the Sigma is better at the telephoto end (which the DxO results suggested is true mainly for the centre of the frame) and the Tamron is the better wide angle; for most of what Louise claims to shoot that would still be saying Tamron to me, but not for the rescue stuff. On the other hand, we've repeatedly said that if range is a priority, you're better off with a dedicated telephoto like a 70-300. Only Louise can say whether she can change lens, though - if you're shooting someone in the water and also a helicopter rescue and it's raining (because Britain...) I can see it might be tricky to swap.

 

Going off the dpreview comparison of say the choice is closer than before - but we're still not going to be challenging what the sensor can do with either.

 

If there's no option of buying a true macro lens like the Tamron 60mm or 90mm in the future, the Sigma may have merits for close-up jewellery - though extension tubes or a close-up dioptre would negate the difference. So to be its main benefit would be the autofocus speed - but I doubt either will be tracking birds in flight very effectively.

 

I think you're still at the "pick one and be happy" stage. Just know that you're not getting the best image quality for your money with either.