My daughter has a Nikon D3100 and she's looking for a zoom lens which will also work well for sporting events. A sport/zoom lens I guess. Does anyone have any suggestions? Something in the $500 range. She's a novice taking photography in her first year of college. Thanks in advance.

The Tamron 70-300 VC USD is a good choice. It's a good focal length for most outdoor sports, it's sharp and focuses reasonably fast. Adorama has it for $349.

Thank you TCav. That looks like a great choice.

The Nikon 70-300 AF-S VR is better, but at $586.95 it's a lot more expensive, especially with Tamron's $100 mail-in rebate.

The Tamron 70-300mm VC is a good buy at $349, it can be used on full frame as well as APS-C cameras.

what sports? In what capacity? The Tamron is a very sharp lens but useless for indoor sports (because of the f5.6 aperture). I'm not sure "relatively fast" is a good description for it's focus speed - it's not an AF speed that is great for sports. And, it's important to talk about how she's going to use it. If she's a student at a major college and plans on taking shots from the stands, 300mm is woefully short so you could be spending a lot of money for fairly poor results with any 300mm lens

Agreed,, this is the better lens. I think you can get a used one for $150-200?