nikon afs 300/f4

I'm now using sigma 150-500 on my d7000...

do you think that selling the sigma lens and getting a d7000 + nikon afs 300/f4 + 1.4 tele would be much better for me?
[reason - sharpness and details]

In short yes. The Nikon is a better lens.

The resale value of the Nikon will be also better when you want to upgrade to say a 200-400 f4 or a 500mm f4 VR tele.

Your telephoto reach will come down a bit to 420mm (300mm plus 1.4x TC). That becomes a challenge especially for bird photography, unless you know where to click each species. For example, you may get a kingfisher always perched a few feet away in the neighbourhood pond, whereas the same species can be mostly found far off during a safari in Ranthambhore. You will realise that the quality of your images through the Nikon 300mm f4 VR plus 1.4x TC would be much better when the subject is in range.

I have had no experiences with the Nikon range of lenses, but like Sabyasachi said, there will be a huge difference - especially since you are moving from a zoom to a prime lens.
- Prime lenses are simpler in construction, with lesser moving parts, lesser distortion elements, which makes the difference to quality
- Prime lenses are a bit faster which allows a quicker shot making process, where in a zoom, you have the additional task of zooming in or out the picture
- Having recently graduating to a 400 Prime from the Canon 100 - 400 and the Sigma 150-500 i am beginning to feel that the Prime lens actually kindles your creativity for unlike a Zoom you will need to move around even within a Safari vehicle to get the object within focus, while with a zoom, all i had to do was to zoom in or zoom out from a sitting position to bring the object into focus.
- Having said that, the biggest advantage i feel the zoom gave me was the ability to go on a safari with just one lens. Say, with the 100-400, i could look up a Crested Serpent Eagle on a perch by the safari path and immediately turn to get an elephant herd on the viewfinder. Today, i am forced to carry two bodies - one with the prime and the other with the zoom to accommodate larger mammals that are closer.
However, the quality that the prime churns out, more than makes up for the hardships of the extra load.

Hope this helps

regards
Rajan

thank you for the suggestions...

Mr. sabyasachi - the 420mm range will be somewhat similar to 150-500mm's 500 range,
All my good pics taken from the 150-500 are due to super closeups, if the subject is far away, it is usually a blob of colours with no details...I hope this factor will improve in 300f4+1.4e...

Mr. rajan - i always carry two bodies in my safaris, even with my sigma 150-500, with another camera attached to a 18-55 to capture environmental shots of mammals that are closeby (I found out that some environmental shots are simple special, far better than a closeup [e.g. - http://yourshot.nationalgeographic.com/photos/2265881/ ]), so I think that will not be too much of a issue for me...

My main aim for now is to improve my picture quality, hope the 300f4+1.4e will give me an extra edge in that...

In wildlife photography equipment plays a big part. However, too often people tell me that it is only equipment which separates the good photographers from the rest. So for the benefit of our readers, I am writing this.

The lens characteristics like sharpness, contrast, ability to resolve details, colour etc are given. However, to get sharp images with lot of details there are also other factors.

Critical focus: If you miss the focus, then the details will obviously not be there.

Shutter speed: The shutter speed should be high enough to arrest subject movement.

Support: Use of tripod, monopod, beanbag etc or good handholding techniques will help in giving sharp images. Shoddy hand holding techniques often reduces the sharpness of images coming out of even the latest super-telephoto lenses. A lot of those examples can be seen. Too often in such situations people try to sharpen the images during post processing which becomes evident. You should also remember that use of long lenses means you are magnifying the image several times and hence any imperfection will get magnified as well. Especially with the high resolution cameras with increased pixel density, any flaw is evident when viewed at 100%.

And I would like to remind you once again about Robert Capa's wise words "if your images are not good enough, then you are not close enough". You have to be close to the subject at the right position to get the best view of the subject in the best light angle. That is one of the reasons why I always ask people about the amount of crop they had done to their image. It is to drill down into them the need for moving in closer to the subject.

really good suggestions....

recently bought the lens...

My reviews - with comparison to sigma 150-500, its heaven and earth difference; earlier with 150-500, even after working for 30-45 mints and getting a closeup the image was not too good, now even a 1 sec random snap with very high crop is 10 times better than sigma's closeup...

thanks everyone for suggesting this lens... :thumbup1:

Very wise suggestions by Sabyasachi and Rajanji. I also bought my Nikon 300f4 just a week back and now have ordered for my Nikon 1.4xtc. Flipkart is throwing some amazing deals. I was a bit worried that since this lens doesn't come with the VR variant there may be evident shakes. But I was grossly mistaken. This lens is amazingly fast. There is no need for a VR in this lens, it just flies. I still have to test it with a teleconvertor but I am sure it will still be fast. Most times the Sigma 150-500 would give sharp images at closer distances and at 500mm anything greater that f8 would be bad in terms of sharpness, these are my personal observations with the 150-500. I suppose quite a few Nikon users like Sucheth and Kaustuv have also included the Nikon 3004+1.4xtc, seeing their images gave me the extra boost I wanted in buying the lens. Be assured- You wont regret it.

in my opinion, 1.4x is also very fast with this lens with no issues, its almost as fast as without the tc...