Need some help with my lense choice, to make my photos better

Mercedes5CLR

Mercedes5CLR

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Lewisville, TX
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Hi guys, i have been looking into buying some lenses for my Nikkon D90. It came with an standard 100mm , and a telescoping 200mm-300mm lense. At the moment i am getting photos like this. I want to get closer to the action with less picture noise. Here are some of my better pictures. Also some of these have been edited by Picasa.

Please give me some advice i am a complete novice but, have had some good results..

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I'm seeing it, but not yours.
 
Your 300mm is not long enough?!
 
You could get a teleconverter which would give your focal length a 40%, 70% or 100% focal length boost but with the lenses you are using you will probably lose autofocus (which is useless for what you want to do). The best thing you could probably do would be to hire a Nikon AF-S VR 200-400mm f/4 lens along with a Nikon AF-S TC-20E III teleconverter, that would give you 200-400 without the teleconverter and 400-800 with it. The hire cost may be quite expensive but as these events are probably pretty rare it should be worth it.
 
A longer lens isn't going to make your photos better. You're plenty close on most of those.

What I see are mostly snapshots taken in full-auto. Learn how to feel your composition from the subject and learn the mechanics and technique of actually using your camera.

We have a great Tutorials Section here.

It came with an standard 100mm , and a telescoping 200mm-300mm lense.
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None of your shots are taken at focal lengths longer than 200mm. If your framing isn't tight enough, I'd suggest to zoom out further to 300mm, but I suspect the real problem is that you misunderstand the lenses you actually have. Maybe post some pictures of your lenses.
 
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Okay, the lenses i have are Nikon DX AF-s Nikkor 18-105mm 1:3.5-5.6G ED, and a Nikon DX AF-S Nikkor 55-200MM 1:4-5.6 G ED.

The shots in the air like the F-18 are center of the shot but, what you dont see is that i have cropped the hell out of the photo. I have killed some were in the 80-90 percent of the orignal size. The bigger stuff like Fat Albert was closer to me so it came out much better. I have been looking at renting a 200-400MM lens.
 
Okay, the lenses i have are Nikon DX AF-s Nikkor 18-105mm 1:3.5-5.6G ED, and a Nikon DX AF-S Nikkor 55-200MM 1:4-5.6 G ED.
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Ah, that makes more sense.

The shots in the air like the F-18 are center of the shot but, what you dont see is that i have cropped the hell out of the photo. I have killed some were in the 80-90 percent of the orignal size. The bigger stuff like Fat Albert was closer to me so it came out much better. I have been looking at renting a 200-400MM lens.
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Good idea.
 
For airshows, 400ish mm zoom lens is ideal (I am a Canon shooter, so I don't really know what's the equivalent of the 100-400mm in the Nikon world) even if you are standing in front of the flight line. Unless you plan to go to every airshows around, it probably makes much more sense to just rent one though.
And I agree with epp_b, you may want to learn the basics first, full auto is not something you want to use for taking airshow pictures.
You may want to take a look at this guide too, it gives you some good tips on what to do in an airshow: http://www.allianceairshow.com/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=TkTr92DyuqQ%3d&tabid=80

BTW are these pics from Alliance Airshow? (the field looks very familiar)
 
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Thanks for the great insight. Any more help you guys can give me or advice?

Ya all the photos are from the 2009 Alliance Air show except the last one. That was taken during the Addison July 4th festival. I still think if i had a better lens that would of been a wonderful picture. It still is one of my favorite.

I plan on going to this years Alliance air show because they will have the F-22 Demo team preforming. It should be very exciting and this will be my first time shooting the bird.
 
The 200-400 should give you the extended reach you're after and will also focus faster but it won't guarantee great shots. The best thing you can do is keep taking pictures, experience will get you better results than any lens or camera.
 
Yea, i was thinking about heading to DFW Airport some day and go out to photo point. They have built area the you can go and get some great shots. I just need to practice more.
 
Mercedes5CLR said:
The shots in the air like the F-18 are center of the shot but, what you dont see is that i have cropped the hell out of the photo. I have killed some were in the 80-90 percent of the orignal size. The bigger stuff like Fat Albert was closer to me so it came out much better. I have been looking at renting a 200-400MM lens.
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TBH that's actually quite apparent. The arbitrary aspect ratios and variable image quality and noise give it away.

But, yeah, whatchagonnado. Something like a 70-300mm lens is the longest you could get without getting into very expensive lens territory (and that's only a 50% improvement over 200mm, which is good but not mega awesome) unless you, as others suggested, rent.

And that last shot is slick, a "better" lens wouldn't have made it any better.
 
it might just be my monitor but alot of those look a little flat....perhaps you can look at adjusting some picture profiles on your camera, like increasing some contrast or saturation. this may reduce the amount you have to do in photoshop/picasa/lightroom and give you better pics straight from the camera. this is assuming you, like me, dont really enjoy fiddling for ages to get photos right after the fact youve taken them.

but appart from that your shots look pretty damn nice to me mate! i dont know how much you've cropped into them though. 300mm is pretty long, but ive found many a time when 300mm was no where near enough and my subjects were pretty small in the frame. saddly trying to get anything more than 300mm in a decent grade of lens is ???, so you could look at hiring kit.
 
Rather than adjusting contrast etc, I agree with the above comment on using more of the manual aspect of the camera instead of the auto settings. By using aperture/shutter speed/ISO to balance the exposure, you'll find that you get a better tonal range and won't really have to adjust it in photoshop at all (other than sharpness, but that's a given really). Also, again working on your composition. Other than that, I love a couple of the shots you posted, namely the last one, and the second one.
 
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