Tips for shooting with telephoto zoom lens

[MChang]

Hello everyone!

I am quite new to photography with a DSLR. I got my first DSLR camera (Nikon D5000) few weeks ago and I managed to figure out how to use the manual mode without much problems.

When I went to the zoo to take some photos, the photos didn't turn out good since the lens that came with the camera couldn't zoom far at all. Then few days ago I got a Sigma 70-300mm F4.5-5.6 DG OS lens and it was a good price and people at the store recommended it. I went back to the zoo to test it out. I was quite satisfied with the quality of the lens, but I think I made a mistake getting this lens. The problem is that I had a hard time taking photos of animals that in the dark. I tried everything like decreasing the shutter speed, decreasing the F number, and increasing the ISO but some of the subjects were too dark or the shutter wasn't fast enough. I did some research and figured out that this lens might be too slow because of the aperture.

Is there anyway to fix this?
Thanks in advance

[teaking]

Well really you should ideally be shooting with at least 1/focal length so 1/300th second which in dark places is hard. Your lens seems like its F5.6 at the longest end which could cause some problems with camera shake in dim light trying to achieve these speeds. Other than Flash and High ISO theres not much you can do actually I lied a tripod could help also.

Sigma do a 70-200mm 2.8 and a 50-150mm 2.8 which are both 2.8 through the whole lens maybe these would be better lenses to consider?

[GadgetRick]

AS you zoom to the longer focal lengths, your aperture gets smaller. This means you're capturing less light. If you don't change something else (shutter speed, ISO or lighting), you'll get dark pictures.

Zooms like that are great for well-lit photography. Once it gets darker, it's tough to get well-exposed shots with them. They're great but you have to know its limitations.