2 replies to this topic

[johnson10]

hello, i am new to this site. I have a D3200. I really enjoy taking wildlife photos. Can anyone recommend the best lens for getting close up action shots. Thanks....

[Merco_61]

Welcome to the forums!

There is a current thread about lenses for wildlife here. 

The best lens on technical merits isn't one lens, but a set of the superteles, but they are heavy and expensive beasts. There is no zoom that comes even close to the long primes in the right hands.

[nikdood17]

Wildlife could be ants an inch from your lens or elk a half mile away. Or a 700-pound bear with bad breath breathing down your neck. Never try to take selfies of wild bears. Some people do.

I assume you want to take photos of birds and grazing critters pretty far away. A 300mm lens is a good start. I love the 500mm catadroptic mirror lens for this purpose. But an 80-300 zoom lens might be just the ticket. You might invest in a lens doubler, too. I once tried like the devil to take photos of a circling hawk with a 400 mm lens on my Nikon F. The bird seemed to know what distance I wanted between him and me and always kept just beyond that point.