I’m off to Canada in a week and I’m taking my trusty Nikon D60 with me. Now, it only has a 18-55 VR lens and I wondering if it is worth getting something with a longer range (such as the 18-105VR) to take instead.

The trouble is I can’t afford much over £200 and these things ain’t cheap 😯

Any suggestions?

I do tend to prefer landscape type shots, so it’s not a big deal, but a bigger range would come in handy.

wondering if it is worth getting something with a longer range (such as the 18-105VR) to take instead

You know what you are likely to want to take pictures of, so decide if you want more zoom or not!

I find for holiday snaps the lens is pretty irrelevant. You end up taking the photos that you can take. So you end up with different photos depending on what lens(es) you take rather than better or worse ones.

There in lies the crux of the matter: I was just thinking that on holiday, the option is not always there to be able to get closer to a potential subject, which is where a lens with a longer zoom range would come in handy.

Zoom won’t make much difference with landscape stuff really. You can zoom in on bits of it but your kit zoom would be ok for that I’d have thought.

Personally I’d save £200 or get something really different like a fast prime.

I just wonder if it would be more versatile. Having said that, I have read that the 18-105VR is actually not as good a lens as the 18-55VR, and therefore it may be a case of sticking with quality rather than going for quantity – like so many things 😆

Look on http://www.lensesforhire.co.uk – (I think that’s the address) and hire a lens instead.
My money would be on hiring the 18-200mm VR as a ‘one lens does all’ solution.

Alternatively, get the 70-300mm VR if you think you might need more reach – you’ll just have a small gap, between the long end of your normal lens & the short end of the 70-300.

I am 99% sure that both these lenses have their own AF motors so will work with your camera, but perhaps best to check this out?

Oh, and make sure you have tons of memory, batteries & your charger!

Zoom won’t make much difference with landscape stuff really.

Oddly it can. If you want a shot of a huge sun setting over mountains then a 500mm lens could come in very handy.

Why not just take a 55-200 or 75-300 as well? May be a bit of extra weight and faff but it’s a more flexible and less redundant solution.

I have read that the 18-105VR is actually not as good a lens as the 18-55VR

I could’ve guessed that – you don’t get owt for nowt. Wider zooms at the same price are usually worse than narrower ones.

Alternatively, get the 70-300mm VR if you think you might need more reach

This – don’t mess about with overlap. Two lenses is always better than one 🙂 A 300mm lens will open up all sorts of new possibilities.

Oddly it can. If you want a shot of a huge sun setting over mountains then a 500mm lens could come in very handy

True, I am thinking of stuff like distant mountains and features, where zooming in a lot just results in haze and washed out images.

Good call on the 55-200 – they seem to be really good value too.

Beware cheap long-range zooms, their quality is generally lacking.

Even the Nikon 55-200VR?

I dunno about being wary. After all if you want to zoom in, and you haven’t got a lot of cash, what choice do you have? It’s better to buy a cheap one than not have one at all. Very slightly distorted/unsharp images are better than no images.

DXO has the 55-200 pretty much identical to the 18-55, so if you’re happy with the 18-55…

I dunno about being wary. After all if you want to zoom in, and you haven’t got a lot of cash, what choice do you have? It’s better to buy a cheap one than not have one at all. Very slightly distorted/unsharp images are better than no images

Disagree, I’d rather be creative with a shorter lens than take shots with a better-for-purpose lens then get them home and be disappointed. Nothing I hate more than finding unsharp results.

Personally I would get a 50mm 1.8 prime

But

55-300 Nikon for £199….
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/nikon-55-300mm-f4-5-5-6g-af-s-vr-ed-dx-199-jacobs-digital-3-quidco/964799

Disagree, I’d rather be creative with a shorter lens than take shots with a better-for-purpose lens then get them home and be disappointed. Nothing I hate more than finding unsharp results

Looking at the stats for the 55-200VR that’s simply not an issue.

Disagree, I’d rather be creative with a shorter lens

But there’s no substitute for length (ooer) so if you haven’t got the zoom then that’s a door which will be closed to you.

When I’m shooting, I don’t want to take just ANY shot, I want to take the shot I see. If my equipment doesn’t let me do it I am frustrated.

I’ve been using a 25mm prime for the last few outings. It’s made me look for different photo opportunities, which is good in a way, but it’s forced me to give up on others, which is annoying.

Disagree, I’d rather be creative with a shorter lens than take shots with a better-for-purpose lens then get them home and be disappointed. Nothing I hate more than finding unsharp results.

To be honest I agree, and this is one of the reasons for this thread: If I can’t buy anything worth having at this pricepoint then I’d rather save my money and stick with what I’ve got.

However, I have found the 55-200vr on sale for £120.

But there’s no substitute for length (ooer) so if you haven’t got the zoom then that’s a door which will be closed to you.

To me there’s no point going through the door if the other side is a blurry horrible world. Each to his own I suppose.

Putting aside the fact that the 55-200VR is plenty sharp enough for all but the most demanding uses (i.e. more than fine for holiday use)…

It depends on your print size. If you’re just posting on the web, or making photo books pretty much any new-ish lens is fine (it’s actually impossible to tell the difference between a mediocre lens and the best lens at that size). You can always sharpen in pp too. If you’re printing poster size then it may become an issue, unless it’s a canvas, which is far more forgiving of sharpness.

A cheap zoom won’t result in THAT bad of an image. For example, that Nikon 55-300 mentioned above made this at 300mm.

[ EXPLORE ] by Canelle Didouan, on Flickr

What an abomination! If I’d taken that I’d be gutted!

And this – ugh, what a blurry, horrible world:

ekorre by Oscar Oglecki, on Flickr

I have a 18-200 Tamron lens for my D5000 it gets left on pretty much all the time, I do have a couple of other lenses like a 50mm prime that gets a bit of use. The Tamron isnt a bad lens its cheap and cheerful and is plenty good enough for my skill level and I would definitely recommend it to other nikon users on a budget, you will find a new one for under £200.

However if you do like taking mostly landscape shots then would you not be better off with a wide angle lens? Although that will probably set you back more than £200 unless you get a second hand bargain.

Pah! You can tell nothing from those shots. I bet in the full resolution original of that squirel you’ll find at least one eyelash that isn’t perfectly sharp. With a 10kg, £10,000 lens it would have been a sharp eyelash! Anything else is unacceptable. 😉

5e.. quite right.. it doesn’t matter if you can’t SEE the imperfections.. just knowing that they exist on some scale ruins the whole thing.

(sorry CK just messin 😉 )

Anyway, back to the OP – where are you going on holiday?

I got my 70-300mm after we got back from Colorado because I saw loads of brilliant wildlife that I really wanted to get up close to, and my 150mm was just not enough. Too many tiny images resulting in frustration. Now I’ve added a 2x teleconverter to my list.. and a tripod 🙂

You can always sharpen in pp too

Disagree, it’s a totally different (and less pleasant) result when sharpened in PP. I’ve a few lenses now and none are quite like my old manual focus prime, cheap zooms just don’t have the incredibly sharp crispness and colour rendition of a top quality lens which makes the photo for me. 9 photos out of 10 taken with my 70-300 sigma leave me a bit disheartened at 100%. They look fine on the screen at ~25%, which i suppose is fine for holiday snaps, but I’d just take a compact if I were only taking holiday snaps.

Pah! You can tell nothing from those shots. I bet in the full resolution original of that squirel you’ll find at least one eyelash that isn’t perfectly sharp. With a 10kg, £10,000 lens it would have been a sharp eyelash! Anything else is unacceptable.

It’s not just the actual sharpness of the lens though, it’s the available aperture etc. Cheaper ones tend to have much smaller apertures and a much smaller sweet spot, really limiting where you can actually get a decent shot. Again, with my 300 you need to have it wide open to get a decent shot at a decent ISO on an overcast day, and at that point it’s quite soft. I don’t own any expensive zooms, I’ve tried a couple, but I can’t afford one 🙂

Anyway, back to the OP – where are you going on holiday?

BC: Two weeks travelling around with mates and then a final week riding the Whistler bike park 8)

What’s the exchange rate? Will you have time to get to a camera shop there and buy whatever you decide to get a bit cheaper?

I upgraded my D40 kit lens to the 18-105 and I love it. The extra reach is particularly useful if you see any wildlife. It is quite a bit heavier to walk around with though. As for quality, it was the kit lens for the D90 so I figured it couldn’t be that bad..
This guy agrees too..

sharp crispness and colour rendition of a top quality lens which makes the photo for me

Subject matter makes it for me!

9 photos out of 10 taken with my 70-300 sigma leave me a bit disheartened at 100%

Don’t look at them at 100% then! Why would you even do that?

Canada is a big country so I guess a longer lens will help you see more and take more pictures without having to walk so far.
HTH.

Canada is a big country so I guess a longer lens will help you see more and take more pictures without having to walk so far.

This is true. Ideally I’d like a 18-200 to replace my 18-55, but at this pricepoint I think it would be too much of a compromise.

The Nikon 55-200vr for £147 (the £120 one I mentioned before was a reconditioned one) seems a bit of a bargain.

Mikey – I am thinking of selling my 18-200 VR is you would like to discuss. ericemel at yahoo dot com.

Don’t look at them at 100% then! Why would you even do that?

Because I like detail, because the whole point of taking photos for me is to capture the feeling AND the detail of what’s there to review at a later date. Why not stick with 4 bits per pixel colour, if all you want is subject matter?

What’s the point of a photo of a whale if, when you zoom in, you can’t see the whales eye, or the glint off its back, or the reflection of the boat in the water on its back?

I recently took some of a geyser in iceland, 3 of my favourite shots are before the thing erupted, looking at the intricate detail of the bubbles rising in the water before the surface changed from smooth to rough, who cares about the giant hot eruption of steam that followed shortly after – that bit is only good for a postcard home.