Hi Catherine B,
Have you considered Digiscoping?
I use Digiscoping a lot down Fen Drayton Lakes, it can be a lot cheaper than lenses, more power and more convenient than heavy camera lenses.
It's like having a Swiss Army knife with you, you have a camera, spotting scope and a digiscope all to hand and it does not weigh to much.
My set up is Nikon SLR with a Pentax 80mm spotting scope, all with a camera adapter with a standard 1.25" fitting and suitable T ring for your camera make, it gives me the equivalent of a 1250mm lens, You will have to use manual mode but I think that's better anyway, the results are great, check out some of my photos on the FDL web site photos.
You could get great results for as little as £200 to £300. It would be worth looking in to, the better your camera (which you my already have) the better the results.
Look into it, you never know.
Cheers,
Steve.
Catherine
I can see that your question has invited many answers, which many only made your dilemma worse. Unfortunately, there is no one easy answer and it very much depends on what you want to achieve and what you can afford. Trying to take close-ups of birds on your feeder is one thing, but trying to take photos of distant birds in flight in another. Even your longest lens may struggle with the majority of distant shots and, in my opinion, its the ability of your camera body to capture a good quality image that can be heavily cropped that really matters. It is difficult for me to provide constructive comment because I forfeited my wife's new kitchen for my latest Canon set up, and there are still many occasions when I'd wished that I'd purchased something different. It's only a suggestion, but you need to try things out before you decide and buy. Go to Birdfair 2014 at Rutland Water in August. The prime camera lens and camera suppliers will be there and you can try them all out in a field environment; they even place life-size targets at various distances so that you can compare the difference lenses. Park Cameras should also be there with some of the Sigma lenses, if budget is going to be an issue. Good luck.
Some good points from various people. As Steve said if you are a birder with a scope already then digiscoping is worth a look at. Adding a big telephoto to bins, scope, tripod is quite an undertaking weight-wise. Great point from Tim about the bird fair. If you are keen on getting better images but are not sure what will work best for you then definitely worth trying before you buy. Both these guys know what they are talking about as demonstrated by their results.
Best of luck and always happy to chat with you in the visitor centre about Nikon stuff as I use the black lenses rather than the grey......
Hi Catherine,
As Dave suggests, because of possible costs and regrets,
NEVER buy any type of optical equipment blind, (Internet), whether it be camera, binoculars, spotting scope or even an astronomical telescope. Everyone's eyes and expectations are different.
Always remember the optical 3 "T" rule,
Touch, Try, Talk
Hi, just want to correct what may have been a misunderstanding. While a 1.4x teleconverter won't work (or at least won't work well) with a 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 zoom, it'll work beautifully with a 300mm f4 prime. This is what I use - see my blog for examples. Lens plus converter cost only a little more than the Siggy 150-500mm and to my eyes the image quality is better (I've used the Sigma too so can compare!)
Hi
I'm not a Nikon user but some very good advice has been posted regarding lenses that fit your bill. As far as I'm away some of the entry level Nikon cameras don't have an in built focus motor. What that means is that if your camera doesn't have an in built focus motor and the lens doesn't have its own focus motor then you won't be able to auto focus.
The Sigma 150-500 does have an in built HSM motor which means it will AF with any Nikon body. I don't know about the 80 - 400 Nikon lens but assume it will. As others have pointed out there is a new Tamron 150-600 which is I believe not available for Nikon yet and totally out of stock for Canon in the UK also.
The Sigma 150-500 is a very nice budget lens but IQ can be a bit hit and miss. If you get a good copy it can be very sharp in the centre but sharpness will fall off at the outer edges. Thats not too bad for a crop sensor as in your camera but gets even worse on a full frame body.
I've used, and continue to use the Sigma 150-500 on Canon bodies (crop) and I'm happy with the results.
As a lens to let you get closer to your subjects its a very nice "budget" option. It has it's limitations but unless you want to shoot professionally or require the absolute in sharpness over the entire frame it's a great option to look at.
Imac is quite right. The D3100 does not have a focusing motor in the camera body so will only autofocus with lenses with built in motors. So for Nikkors this means AF-S lenses only. So the new 80-400 will autofocus with your D3100 but the old version won't.
Hi guys thankyou for all your comments they have been very helpfull if not for now the future. My nikon d3100 can take some good bird photos but i have to zoom right in to catch them, im looking for something more enhanced. I'm currently looking at getting a HD Telephoto lens which is good for price but will have to wait and see for now.