Hey,

I've only got little free time but I want to spend it somewhere else than on the PC and/or with my wife and kids. I also want to do something active. I chose for a Nikon D70 with the standard lens (forgot the sizes and it's at home), a 4Gb memory card and a Nikon 70-300mm lens I got for free.

Now what's the use exactly of the last lens, the 70-300? What do you use it for? I've noticed that, if you zoom in, you can focus on one aspect and then the background is blur. I like the effect but is that its main use/target?

Thanks in advance and my apologies on the "noob-ish" question.

Regards,
James

Say you're at the side of a lake and you want to take a picture of swans in the lake. Kind of impossible with 55mm, the swan would most likely be tiny in contrast to everything around it. With 300mm, you can pretty much get the swan to take up the entire frame.

You probably got a wide angle lens as well the 70 – 300 would be to get you in closer than the other one can great for sports and action shots.

I am a Canon man myself so I don’t know much about the Nikon lenses but if you got it for free it might be a rather cheap lens in terms of quality when I got my first camera a Canon 350D it came with the kit lens (18-55) and the place I got it from also included a 55-200mm its pretty cheep compared to other canon lenses.

But don’t worry to much about that just get out and experiment with it you have a family and kids this lens could let you get some cool shots of them playing around from a distance and if not from a distance then some really cool close ups of there faces and expressions.

Honestly, I use this lens all the time. It's probably my favorite lens in my bag. What do I use it for? Cars and Graffiti. It has an inate ability to make both pop out at you in very nice rich colors. Yes, it's got the 300mm zoom which works pretty well, but keep it around the 135 range and the lens is golden.

Thanks for the information thus far. I'll experiment a little more and try to share.