Everyday lens for a D3000?
Mrs has a D60 with 18-55, 55-200 & 35 prime.
Managed to pick up a D3000 body only for a steal of a deal, now looking to get my own lens. I have no specialties, I'll shoot a mountain landscape or a deer 500 yards away, a little bit of everything. Camera is more for having fun with photos than a serious hobby.
Perfectly happy to buy used, but want to hang on to (In lens obviously) autofocus.
Been looking at Nikkor 18-105, competitor 18-200/28-200… Wondering if anybody has any stand out suggestions? A jack of all trades lens for everyday use.
The 18-200 VR is expensive, but remains the best jack-of-all-trades lens.
Or for MUCH less cash, you could have an 18-55 VR for wide-angle work, and 55-200 VR for everything else.
Taking a picture of a mountain landscape or a deer 500m away is not an everyday scenario unless you live in the wilderness. If so, you may want to bring only one lens and that could be an 18-20mm lens or longer. You'll need the 18mm for taking whole mountains while the long end (the longer the better) will be for shooting that deer from afar. Bear in mind that super zoom lenses like those have very low optical quality.
If you are not in the mountain, the 18-55mm will do. If you know exactly what you are doing, an f/1.4 (or lower f/numbered) 35mm would be perfect.
I have the Nikon 18-200mm lens for my walk around lens. I mostly take it on travel and cruises when I want to keep everything lightweight.
But it will cost you more than the D3000 did new. It's not cheap.
However, the best price is to buy a refurbished lens - that is what I did, and it works well.
You can get them here:
http://shop.nikonusa.com/...D.43896400
But sometimes Adorama and B&H sell the same lenses refurbished from Nikon a bit less.
One thing though. The availability of refurbished lenses is spotty, as it depends on the repair cycle. So if they don't have the lens, check daily.
Also, there are two versions of that lens. The "RED VR" and "GOLD VR". Of the two, the "GOLD VR" is the newest, but optically and functionally, the two lenses are the same. The terminology comes from what color the "VR" badge is on the lens. Also the VR on the Gold version is VR II (version 2), but I understand that Red version also has VR II - but it's just not advertised as such.
The only discernible difference between the two lenses (other than the paint color on the VR logo) is the Gold version has a zoom lock. This is a function that allows you to lock the lens at 18mm so that you don't have "zoom creep". Zoom creep is when you have the lens on the camera and when it is pointing down, it tends to zoom out by itself under it's own weight.
Zoom lock then is not a big deal, and is common on a lot of consumer grade zoom lenses.
The refurbished Red VR is about $75 cheaper than the Gold one ($625 vs $699), and they are about 20% less than a new one.
Nikon 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 AF-S DX VR ED Nikkor Lens is a really good product and feels very robust and well made. It is well finished and shows good attention to detail and quality control. The two rings (zoom and focus) feel and glide very well.albeit with a very slight plastic sliding sound. The switches feel fairly OK and generally everything seems like it will last a very very long time. Of course it can't match a mid 80's Nikon prime lens but it is hard to make such a comparison. Firstly they are built differently with different numbers of components and secondly they are used differently.