Because I am not a professional photographer I am not biased by years or decades of prior experience, changing technology and times. I do not take pictures of brick walls or test charts and critique lenses for fun. I travel anywhere in the world and I take photos of things I think look cool.
Almost everyone has a digital camera these days. Point-and-shoot cameras are the most popular because they take great photos, are small, light and cheap. For those of you who like to carry as little as possible gear, don’t like to spend that much money and value having a camera that can go with you everywhere with very little hassle and cost, a quality point-and-shoot is everything and more than you need. My favorite is the Canon S90 which is not the tiniest point-and-shoot but has a great interface, lots of cool features and takes tremendous photos.
For those of you like myself, who aren’t satisfied with getting a great or even excellent photo but want a PERFECT photo, you will likely have to go through a trial and error process to develop a camera kit which suits all your needs. This camera kit will no doubt have a digital SLR camera body and an assortment of lenses.
Benefit from My Obsession
Use my painful and expensive method to finding the right camera gear for my bag to help you. I spent a better part of 4 months literally spending all day reading about lenses, buying them and testing them in real world situations. This was a good and bad experience for me. The bad was instead of traveling and going to new places I was inside reading about the lens options I had and taking photos of the same things over and over again.
The good was I learned a lot about photography, experienced quite a few lens and camera options and found a kit which I am 100% completely satisfied with. Testing lenses inside camera shops wasn’t good enough for me. I just went out and bought the lenses I read about and used them in real world situations.
My Experience with Camera Bodies & Lenses in the Past Half Year
Nikon D90 Camera Body
I loved the D90 when I had it and I still love it when comparing it to the Nikon D700 which I upgraded to. I actually miss the D90 on a daily basis when I’m shooting with the D700! First of all, the D90 has everything you need and then some. The buttons seem to be all in the right place and it is light but not cheaply built. I bashed the video recording capabilities when I first blogged Nikon D90 Digital SLR Camera but I would like to take that back!
The video lacks autofocus which renders the camera useless for things which move in the vertical plane but it also allows you to control depth of field which is what really differentiates amateur from professional film! Watch any movie or TV show and you will see focus shift from the foreground to the background almost every scene. The D90 allows you to achieve this professional effect which is virtually impossible on all camcorders. Of course if you’re shooting anything other than small scenes for a commercial or movie such as sports or your kids playing you’re still going to want to get a camcorder but the D90 video capabilities can create some professional looking cinematic moments from your digital SLR.
Of course 99% of people, myself included buy a digital SLR to capture still images. In order to get the still images you desire, choosing the correct lens and knowing when/how to use it is crucial. I had a chance to work with a number of popular lenses with the Nikon D90 and here is my experience with each of them.
My Lenses with the Nikon D90
Nikon Nikkor 18-105mm VR
The Nikkor 18-105 mm VR was the first lens I ever used which came with the Nikon D90 kit. I liked the lens performance initially as the focal range was good for a variety of uses and the photos turned out nice and sharp but as I started reading about the many Nikon and 3rd party SLR lens I decided to ‘upgrade’.
While I was almost 100% satisfied with this lens I figured I could get more out of a longer focal length or wider angles. The lens is great for any Nikon SLR because of its built in motor which makes it a perfect lens for anyone on a budget who is just getting into SLR photography.
Users of the D40, D60 and D5000 will like this lens a lot more than the standard kit lens (18-55mm VR) simply because it is just as sharp and has that useful extra 50mm of zoom to work with along with the same valuable VR (Vibration Reduction).
Nikon Nikkor 18-200mm VRII
Like many people who have used the internet to find information about lenses I read the glowing review by Ken Rockwell about this lens.
I researched it and determined that the optic performance was likely the same as the kit lens I wanted to be able to cover more range and this popular lens covers 300mm equivalent telephoto.
I will admit I didn’t know enough about DSLR photography at the time I had this lens to get the most out of it. I believe this lens is a great pickup for almost all photographers who have DX (Nikon cropped frame) sensors. Like Mr. Rockwell says, this truly is a do-it-all lens that can get almost everything the average travel photographer shoots with the exception of the super-wide angles.
Nikon Nikkor 50mm F1.8
Another glowing review by Ken Rockwell caused me to purchase this little lens. It was probably the easiest choice to make as it costs around $100USD and auto focuses with the D90’s built it motor. The lens is simple, light, cheap and gets great performance in even the lowest of light.
You can expect VERY sharp images when taking shots of people or animals within this range. Being a prime lens, the drawback is you have to move your feet rather than twisting a zoom ring.
Nikon Nikkor 10-24mm
Even though the D90 was giving me great images I still desired more. At the time I thought it was the camera I needed to upgrade when comparing my shots with the D90 and 18mm (27mm equivalent) and people with the new, expensive full frame cameras.
It turned out what I really was missing was the wide angle from an ultra-wide angle lens. This Nikkor DX lens was expensive and while the range 10-24mm (15-36mm equivalent) was nice, the performance didn’t meet my satisfaction after spending over $900 USD on it. While images in good light looked pretty good, when the light wasn’t there, the images almost never looked sharp, even when mounted on a tripod.
Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8
I was hesitant to buy a 3rd party lens for my Nikon D90 but I read many positive reviews on Amazon and flicker about this Japanese made Tokina ultra wide. The main knock on the lens from reviews was there was a sample variation with some lenses having issues. It cost $300USD less than the aforementioned Nikkor so I decided to give it a try and I’m glad that I did.
The Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 quickly became my favorite lens for the Nikon D90. Everything about the lens was impressive from the quality of build, to the very smooth zoom ring to the great low light performance and topped off with almost perfectly sharp wide angle images. Although some reviews criticized its focusing ability, it focused perfectly on my D90 although you should take note if your SLR body has a focusing motor or not because this lens does not have one.
Sigma 18-50 mm f/2.8
After experiencing the vast difference between a lens with a standard (f/3.5+) aperture and the professional Tokina 11-16mm with a f/2.8 maximum aperture I decided to give this Sigma a try. As I planned to sell my Nikkor 18-200mm VR I chose this lens for 3 reasons including the one I just mentioned.
Another reason was the Nikon equivalent lens cost several times more and finally this Sigma had very close focusing capabilities. I thought the macro abilities would make this a great “walking around” lens and it did, well kind of. I found when I used this lens I would only use it for close up objects at 50mm. I originally bought it for the versatility but found it wasn’t versatile at all for the kind of shooting I like to do, especially ultra-wide angles.
Part II: Upgrade to the Full Frame Nikon D700
