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i have a d300 and a bunch of glass. my favorites in terms of quality are the 17-55 which stays on my body most of the time, and the 70-200vr which i wish i found more use for as it is a truly amazing lens. i also have the18-200vr which originally was my 'on the camera' lens, but now i only use it when i can only take one lens and need the variety of focal lengths it covers. as for the real wide angle lenses, i think it depends on what sort of shooting you are going to do...if you will do a lot of landscape/scenery, it might make sense. the tokina 11-16 and sigma 10-20 are good choices (tokina better, sigma cheaper). i have done fine with the 17-55 until now, but just bought the sigma as i'm going on a 5 day backcountry hike in yosemite and will get use out of it.
so for most people, if money is not a big issue, i'd say skip the 18-200 and get the 17-55 and 70-200vr. start there are see what sort of shooting you are doing and add focal lengths around these.
Have you ever used Nikons 50mm with f1.4? How fast is your 15-55 lens? I have 18-200 Nikon lens, it's nice but I know there are lenses out there that can give me much crisper results.
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i had a 50 1.8, really sharp but i like zooms so i sold it. the d300 is good enough on the iso performance front that 2.8 is fine. the 17-55 is a 2.8 and a terrific lens. the 18-200vr is good for what it is--a set of compromises of focal length vs speed and size. in its sweet spots it takes good images.
Just read about this lens, sounds amazing.. and photos look great as well. I'm planning on getting Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G and 50mm f/1.4. Have you had any experience with Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8? I was told that this lens give you best possible picture you can get.
the 24-70 2.8 is referred to as 'the beast'. expensive, big, heavy but possibly the best image quality of any lens in that range. one thing to remember though--when you are using a dslr with a 'crop sensor' such as the d300 the effective focal length of any lens has to be multiplied by the crop factor to get the real field of view of the lens/body combo. in the case of the d300, the crop factor is 1.5, so the effective focal length of the 24-70 is really 36--105. a lot of people don't find that wide enough, hence the 17-55 as a super alternative for dx sensor bodies such as the d300. the effective focal length of the 17-55 is 25.5--82.5...confused yet?
Yeah, you are right. No, I'm not confused, actually I did take a DSLR class few months ago and this was covered, so I understand what you mean. I want to have 2 lenses (with exception of my existing 18-200 which I will most likely keep for traveling). But I'm not sure which 2 to get.. I was thinking of 50mm 1.4G (the new one) but some people say that not having a zoom is annoying sometimes.. so I'm not sure..
again, it depends on your shooting habits. if you are going to shoot a lot in very low light and don't like to use flash, the 50 1.4 is a great choice. if it were me, i'd definitely have the 17-55 as the go to lens. then the choice is whether the 70-200 or something longer makes sense. maybe best to go with that, and if you need more length get a multiplier for it. let us know what you choose.
Thanks cohenfive. You have a point. Do you know if there is a noticeable difference in picture quality between 24-70 f/2.8 and your 17-55? Have you seen this lens in real life? Is it really that big and heavy? Is it much bigger than your 17-55?
it's bigger, but it's not unweildy. as for iq, i've seen it but have never shot with the 24-70 but its reputation is similar to that of the 70-200, which is fantastic. but how much sharper can you get than this....sorry for the small images, but i have the originals and they are sharp as a tack.
Great shots! The other reason why I wanted to get 50mm is to have no image destortion when shooting architecture. Does your lens have any distortion at around 50mm?
it's bigger, but it's not unweildy. as for iq, i've seen it but have never shot with the 24-70 but its reputation is similar to that of the 70-200, which is fantastic. but how much sharper can you get than this....sorry for the small images, but i have the originals and they are sharp as a tack.
nice shots. What was your setup on the first pic? What picture mode? Specs please.
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I would take a serious look at the Nikon 18-200mm. I think it's a great buy & wouldn't be suprised if it became the lens of choice. Mine always seems to be the one attached to my D2X & I have some pretty nice lenses (12-24mm f/4, 70-200mm f/2.8 VR, 17-55mm f/2.8, 10.5mm fisheye, etc. All around it serves great duty.
FWIW
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very little post on these...crater lake was only resized, benham falls had minor shadows/highlights adjustments and a very small amount of usm. i am normally pretty cautious around sharpening/usm as to my eye it's easy to make images look 'plasticky'. no reason to alter the colors here, they were just about perfect right out of the camera. we got lucky and had a perfect and calm day for the crater shot, and basically perfect weather everywhere else in oregon that we went.
on the shots, i'm embarrassed to tell you but quite possibly in 'p' mode for crater lake, otherwise aperture priority. on the falls, i had an idea of what i wanted the river to look like so i was in shutter priority, trying to get some 'blur' in the water but not too much that it looked like it was drawn...both of these images were jpeg fine--i only shoot raw on occaison when i have tough lighting conditions. i took a few variants of the shot of the river, but when i saw the crater lake image in the lcd i knew i had what i wanted. both were taken handheld, nothing fancy. these cameras are so good that it's not that hard to get a good image if you know the basics of photography and your camera body/lens. both had the 17-55 2.8 attached. for post processin i use photoshop elements 5.0, again nothing fancy. when i take raw images i'm using nikon capture nx which came with my d300. i don't have a lot of time to do post processing and am no expert, just really enjoy this hobby. we're heading up to yosemite for a 5 day backcountry hike and i'm bringing a full suite of my gear--really looking forward to taking some great shots up there!
on the lenses, it's a personal and economic choice. i still keep the 18-200 around for 'one lens' trips and if you stay within its limitations it's a fine lens, but with glass like the 17-55 or 70-200 the lens basically doesn't have any limitations.
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