What lens/lenses should I get?

[slayer7124]

I have a Nikon D80 with a 18-135mm lens. I'm looking to get a more powerful zoom lens for nature/wildlife and possibly one for portraits. I have weighed my options and with the help of other on a different forum here I have come to these possibilities:

One: The Nikon 70-300mm VR zoom lens and the Nikkor 50mm f1.8 lens.

or

Two: The Nikon 300mm f4 and possibly a teleconverter (wouldn't get this right away) which would bring the range to about 420mm as someone informed me on.

My budget is about $600 or so and I would like to make this purchase soon. I've heard really great things about all these lenses, especially the 50mm f/1.8. Any suggestions/advice is much appreciated.

Thank you!

[freygr]

The 50mm lens is a great portrait lens on a D80, but not the full frame cameras. If you are going to do low light photography consider the 50mm F1.4. I don't think you would be able to stay in your budget getting both a 50mm and the 70-300mm VR lenses.

[slayer7124]

The 70-300mm VR is 470 on bhphoto and the 50mm f1.8 is 110 on the same site. The 50mm f.14 is 260, that would put me out of my budget if I also purchased the 70-300 VR.

[PhotoTrucker_37]

The best advice I can give is to go to B&H Photo Video or some other site where you can read reviews on lenses and pick out certain lenses for the kind of photography you are interested in then pick your price range for each lens and read the reviews on each lens you choose then decide from that point on. Thats how I base my decisions when purchasing a lens.

Regards, Erik Barnes

[slayer7124]

Yea, I already did that. All have good reviews and some people on this site had some good stuff to say about them too. Thanks though!

[Photo-John]

The 300mm f/4 prime should be much better optically than a 300mm zoom. For that reason I'd get it over the zoom. In fact, I did just that. I have the Canon equivalent. It's one of the first lenses I bought when I bought into the Canon EOS system. It's a great lens and I have no doubt the Nikon is just as good or better. Most 70-300mm zooms aren't so great, though. At least not if they cost under $1000.