If you had to choose one Lens to carry through your travels, what would it be?

Question

Please help me select a lens for my travels. I'll be using D70S and my budget for a lens is around $300-400. in addition, is it worth paying 3x as much for nikon lens than sigma? I'm just an amateur so i'm thinking it really shouldn't matter. Please share your thoughts! Thank you!!!!

Answer 1

You seem to be leaning towards a mega-zoom lens. If so, the Nikon isn't 3x as expensive as Sigma... but it is almost twice as expensive ;-)
For the extra money you get vibration reduction, much faster auto-focus and better optics. It's a better lens in every respect. Of course, whether these differences justify the price of the Nikon is a personal call.
Here's a more complete line-up of 18-200mm lenses:
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* Quantaray 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3: $360 at Ritz (house brand)
* Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3: $380 at Ritz and B&H
* Tamron 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3: $390 at B&H (cheaper than Ritz)
* Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6: $750 at Ritz and B&H (back-ordered at both)
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I could list the various 28-200 versions too, but with 28mm and the 1.5 crop factor of the D70, you'd hardly have wide-angle capability. Those 10mm at the wide end make a world of difference for in-door shots and landscapes!
If it's between the third party options, there is no clear winner. Some reviewers favor the Sigma and others give Tamron the edge. Since the Quantaray seems to be a rebranded Tamron, I'd save myself $30 and simply get that. It should be a fine lens for all occasions.

Answer 2

Good question. I guess the answer depends on what you enjoy or envision shooting during your travels. At one extreme, for instance if you were going on a safari to Africa you'd probably only need the longest telephoto lens you can find!

I'll assume that you want to take "general" holiday/travel photos and there are two schools of thought (I've actually done both):

1. Get a mid-range zoom like the Nikon 18-70DX (good quality, flexible, and reasonably cheap). This will give you good coverage of wide-angle to telephoto and the most flexibility (like carrying the most used focal lengths in a single lens). The 18-200 VR is *really* flexible but substantially more than your budget...

2. Get a small fast prime lens. I use the Nikon 35 mm f/2 (excellent quality, not as flexible, reasonably cheap) when I want to travel really light. It's flexible in the sense that it's neither really wide nor really telephoto (!), so you can make it behave like both by getting real close to your subject or stepping back a bit. Photographically its more challenging to use than the zoom. But, it's really small and light and inconspicuous (could be useful some places) and at f/2 it's reasonably "fast" which comes in handy shooting in limited light and out of planes. Plus for the money, the image quality cannot be beat. A 50mm f/1.8 is dirt cheap, one the the sharpest lenses you can find, and also a good alternative although I find it a bit too long (telephoto) on a digital camera like the D70S if it will be your only lens.

Back in the old days, people would get great photos just using a 50 f/2 or f/1.4 (no zooms!!) and personally, I've really enjoyed doing (2) when I've done it -- the challenge is kind of liberating and makes it more fun -- but I realize it isn't for everyone.

As for third-party (like Sigma) over Nikon, optically Sigma does make some very good lenses (which I've used, but they tend to be priced accordingly). Nikon lenses in general seem a bit more solid which might be important if you're backpacking or a bit rough on your equipment, plus resale value is higher if you plan on selling it after you're done. Personally, I stick to Nikon these days since I find I ultimately end up using the sharper/better lenses in my "collection" more, but if you aren't too serious yet and just starting out I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Answer 3

Good question. You don't say what lens you're using now, but it sounds like you're still looking for one.
I had the D70 with the Nikon 18-70 mm kit lens and although everybody told me how nice it was, I just wasn't all that impressed. Yes it's a good all around lens, but my experience has been that it's hard to make the photos "pop out" with it.
The good things I can tell you about it are that it's nice at wide angle, and it zooms to the equivalent (non digital equiv) of a 105 mm lens, which should be great for portraits. I'm mostly a portrait photographer, and I like fairly shallow depth of field and that is hard to achieve with that particular lens even at max zoom. So I guess I'm not really answering your question except I'm telling you my experience with the kit Nikon lens.
Unfortunatelly, my D70 was stollen (or possibly misplaced and then stollen) and don't know if I will ever get over that. Enjoy what you have and take care of it.
Added later:
I almost want to agree with Bev on the 85-300mm which is exactly what I would want for portraits, but for landscape, you might want something a LOT wider than that considering that 85mm is actually about 135mm in digital, and that really is telephoto. if you need to shoot a group of people you're going to have to back up pretty far even at minimum zoom.

Answer 4

I would suggest a 18-200mm lens in the digital only class. I really hate recommending digital lenses because I think they are a waste of money. I would not recommend Sigma over Nikon. Sigma does not pay the licensing fees to camera makers and must reverse engineer the communications from lens to camera body. There have been many issues with Sigma lenses not working with digital camera. I would recommend Tamron over Sigma. Tamron recently bought Medium Film Camera Maker Bronica for the lens fabrication plants. Tamron is making several new lenses for Nikon that are marketed under the Nikon label.

I would recommend the Tamron 18-200mm lens for walking around. This is over a 10X zoom.

Answer 5

I'd say the Nikon 18-200 VR lens, but you already know how I feel about that. :-) The VR is just great and it might help you get an evening shot that would be all fuzz and blur without the VR. Another user has recommended the Tamron of the same specs over the Sigma and he seems to have good reason, so I guess that would be my alternate choice. You can go to http://www.popphoto.com and look around for their lens reviews. They have quite an archive and this might help you choose. Sam

Answer 6

There really is a specific answer to your question. I'm assuming here that what you want is flexible, general use, walking around lens for use as a tourist, while you travel. There is only one lens you should consider, the 28-200mm zoom lens. This lens has a significant amount of zoom capability but still allows you to capture a relatively wide angle in certain shots:

http://www.nikonusa.com/template.php?cat=1&grp=5&productNr=2143

NEVER accept a generic lens....EVER, no exceptions. Buy the Nikon lens.

Answer 7

85 - 300 f 2.8 lens

brand doesn't matter that much but make sure you are comfortable with the way the lens works and that it fits your camera and your style

Answer 8

A very wide angle lens, every time! It is quite small and you get fantastic results.