What is the best lens prime or zoom for wildlife and bird photography for an FX body Nikon?

heartyfisher

In your face ! :-)

at the werribee zoo.

PS loving my 70-200 F4.

BabaGanoush

"I have the 70 -200 f2.8 and a TC-20E AF-S Teleconverter III. I also have the new 80 -400. The new 80 -400 is far superior to the 70-200 +TC 20E"


Late to the discussion, but still....

Ditto, I strongly agree. In the 80-200mm range where the two lenses overlap, the 70-200mm is certainly the better lens, but once you add the TC2.0EIII to extend its reach, the IQ suffers a lot. On safari you don't want to be switching lenses or adding/removing a TC when there's a lot of dust in the air that could get into your equipment. That makes the 80-400mm a better all around choice than the 70-200mm + TC2.0: you get the wider total range in (35mm equivalent) focal lengths in case the animals approach closer than you were expecting, a better IQ at focal lengths at the far end of the telephoto range, and an IQ that is quite decent short ward of 200mm if not up to the high standard of a naked 70-200mm lens. Personally, if I were on safari, I'd probably leave both my 70-200 and 80-400 at home and instead take my 70-300mm, which is actually quite a decent yet inexpensive lens that produces high quality shots that would work for me, unless I intended to enlarge a picture to cover my entire office wall. In most cases, when you're out on the road working under difficult field conditions, it's the environmental conditions not the MTF that will determine the IQ of your photos. The 70-200mm, the 80-400mm, the 70-300mm---they are all very good lenses. Another thing, instead of taking along a heavy lens, like the 80-400 for instance, a different option would be to choose a light lens like the 70-300 and take a second body, say a D7100, mounted with a different, perhaps shorter lens attached. That would give you a lot of flexibility for the same total bulk and/or weight.

"Oh, shoot! That is a great image Tommie."

It is a great shot...except in terms of what equipment I'd take with me on safari it's not the typical shot I think I would actually take. Without context, i.e., a wider foreground/background, the picture could just as easily have been taken at a local zoo without the expense and effort of traveling all the way to Africa. In fact, I have taken many similar shots with my 80-400. Not that I wouldn't take a few such closeups if I were on safari, but the balance for me would naturally tend toward wider angle shots (i.e., probably at shorter focal lengths) in order to capture more of the entire scene in which the wild animal is, say, the main focus but not the exclusive focus.