Needing lens for travelling with Nikon d90? - 1

I'm moving to London (from Australia) for 1-2 years to do a lot of travelling. I've got a Nikon d90 and would like to buy and take just 1 lens with me that will be great for traveller photos. I'll need something with a good zoom range and i want a decent quality as i want to come back with amazing photos.

Currently i have the 2 standard lens' that come with the kit which haven't been the best.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated: D

While your two kit lenses may not be the best, it's going to be difficult to beat them with a single lens that cover the same range. Thanks to pretty basic physics you can't really get a single lens that's absolutely great all round.

Personally as an all-day lens I use Tamron's 18-270mm, but in the version I have it seems to perform better for Sony and Pentax owners than the Nikon and Canon versions do (there's a new version of the lens so I don't know if this is any different. However even then, due to the range it's never really the sharpest lens there's.

The 24-70mm 2.8 can be an option, the focal is less wider for landscape and the focal is not super long but the quality will be there.

If you want a mega zoom that cover more, there's the 18-200 but like your 2 standard kit lens, the quality won't be there.

Or you could buy a super wide angle for landscape and 35mm or the 50mm 1.8 for street shot and the 70-200 2.8 sigma for the long focal range. It would cost you about the same thing as the 24-70mm 2.8. But that make 3 lens which you're not interested to carry.

Quality, quantity or greater focal range, it's a choice you have to make!

The go-to lens here would be Nikon's 18-200. Crim Liar mentioned the Tamron 18-270, which could be better for your purposes, but I have no experience with it and his recommendation is not a high endorsement. I have been quite satisfied with the 18-200 for pretty much everything.

Samples:

I also use the 28-300 a lot, although the 28mm end is only slightly wide angle on a D90 and you might find that a bit limiting. You can't always back up far enough or quickly enough. The benefit of the 300mm end is the reason to consider this lens, though.

Samples:

There are hundreds of samples with each lens, so just glance at the thumbnails to get an idea what range they cover.

The 18-200vr is my walking around lens. Is the image quality less than a handful of primes? Yes, but you have to sacrifice something if you only want to schlepp around one do-it-all lens. For travel shots it would be a great option. You could add one prime in your favorite focal length and still have a small and portable kit.