I'm after a decent HD camcorder which also takes good stills, anyone know of any?

cheers

Portrait of a Herring Gull:



Red-legged partridge (taken from driver's seat of car!):

Fuji cameras take reasonable video footage, the S1850 I used for a basic video shot in the mountains and the sound was excellent and even though I had a crummy low speed card the video footage was more than acceptable, not grainy/jerky at all. They take pretty decent stills as well
I'm sure many other companies pro-sumer type cameras do the same thing, many well under £200, even under £150 in some cases.

Sigma or Tamron 70-300mm as a first telephoto lens for a beginner to DSLR?

OoOGazOoO wrote:Sigma or Tamron 70-300mm as a first telephoto lens for a beginner to DSLR? I'm 100% Sigma at the moment, really good value lenses when you step up to F2.8, for a beginner though I like the Canon 55-250mm IS, plenty of reach, good image stabilization, holds its resale value really well too. At around £100 it is a steal http://bit.ly/Ic5kXA

OoOGazOoO wrote:Sigma or Tamron 70-300mm as a first telephoto lens for a beginner to DSLR? I'm 100% Sigma at the moment, really good value lenses when you step up to F2.8, for a beginner though I like the Canon 55-250mm IS, plenty of reach, good image stabilization, holds its resale value really well too. At around £100 it is a steal http://bit.ly/Ic5kXA

Big Graeme wrote:I'm 100% Sigma at the moment, really good value lenses when you step up to F2.8, for a beginner though I like the Canon 55-250mm IS, plenty of reach, good image stabilization, holds its resale value really well too. At around £100 it is a steal http://bit.ly/Ic5kXA Thanks Graeme, needs to be Nikon fit though, should have said in my original post. I have just got a D3100, but looking for a 'first' telephoto lens, for beginner purposes, etc... Was looking at the Sigma or the Tamron. Thanks again!

Big Graeme wrote:I'm 100% Sigma at the moment, really good value lenses when you step up to F2.8, for a beginner though I like the Canon 55-250mm IS, plenty of reach, good image stabilization, holds its resale value really well too. At around £100 it is a steal http://bit.ly/Ic5kXA Thanks Graeme, needs to be Nikon fit though, should have said in my original post. I have just got a D3100, but looking for a 'first' telephoto lens, for beginner purposes, etc... Was looking at the Sigma or the Tamron. Thanks again!

Ah, Sigma all the way then.

Thanks mate!

In terms of what the Yanks call "bang per buck' then I absolutely agree.

The Nikon lenses sometimes have the edge with image quality but it's not necessarily a given.

The only problem I've ever had with a Sigma lens is with my 150-500. This a great vfm lens and fast enough to shoot rugby in good light at ISO400-800, but although it worked perfectly with my late, lamented D200, I'm told it needs to be "re-engineered" (WTF that means) in order to work with my D300s.

No experience with Nikon lenses so I was unable to offer advice. I upgraded all my lenses to f2.8 in the last two years, to buy Canon lenses it would have cost me a fortune, to do it with second user Sigmas it was fairly painless, apart from the 70-200mm.

That 150-500mm just needs a chip swapped out, Canon later model cameras have the same issue, if you have an old fashioned camera shop close by they should be able to help, I think it costs around £90 if you get Sigma to do it.