Travel Lens

[e_dawg]

Anyone have any thoughts on what I should purchase as a single-lens travel solution? I have a Nikon D40 with the 18-55 kit lens. I find the 18-55 is decent when stopped down, and I love how compact and lightweight it is (205 g) -- a definite plus when carrying it around all day. However, I find that I am not getting enough range on the telephoto end.

Lenses I'm looking at:

1. 18-135, $300 US, 385 g (lighter, cheaper, 1 lens, no VR)
2. 18-200 VR, $750 US, 560 g (more expensive, 1 lens, VR, heavy)
3. 55-200 VR, $250 US, 335 g (cheaper, VR, would have to carry 2 lenses)

Optically, the 18-135 is very sharp under most situations, but suffers from a bit more chromatic aberration (CA), vignetting, and distortion than average. The 18-200 is sharp when stopped down a bit, and suffers from an average amount of CA, vignetting, and distortion that one would expect of a wide-range zoom. But what really separates the 18-200 from the 18-135 is the VR image stabilization that is claimed to be good for 4 stops. That and the weight.

So, a couple questions to the gallery:

1. How much success have you had with post-processing the CA, vignetting, and distortion out of your images, and how much time / trouble is it?

2. How much do you think I would miss the VR and extra tele range of the 18-200 if I got the 18-135 instead? I would prefer a lighter lens.

Thoughts? What setup do you use for travel?

 

[LunarMist]

The D40 is unfortunately crippled by the limited lens selection. One saves a couple hundred bucks on a body without AF motor and spend many hundreds on the lenses.

I don't think any of those lenses would be too bad in the CA dept, especially on a low-res sensor and with PP. Capture NX is usually fine for removing color fringing from CA or sensor blooming. PS can remove some CA by adjusting the magnification of the three color channels and allows shifting as well. NX corrects reasonably well for first order lens distortions, but you will need to compose wider to crop after correction. PTlens allows for more complex corrections and your lens may be in the library. Light falloff is reduced at the smaller apertures one would use for decent sharpness on a slow zoom. It can be corrected well enough in PP by several means, though some people prefer not to brighten the corners. I use PS and some 3rd party plugins for radial density and lens corrections.

I don't have a travel lens setup, but would bring at least one fast lens for indoor work. A 28/1.8 or 30/1.4 would be about right on a 1.5x crop body, but probably none will AF on the D40. I'll think more about it.

 

[e_dawg]

Yeah, I knew about the D40 not having an internal AF motor, but I made sure I knew what lenses I could / could not use as a result, and I don't worry about not being able to use non AF-S / AF-I lenses.

I can get an AF-S 50/1.8 for $100 if I need a fast prime, although I definitely prefer going with a single lens when traveling.

Just purchased the 18-200 VR to try out at home. First impressions are favourable and about as expected. I was worried that it may be a little heavy, but I think I can deal with it for the VR, which seems to be worth it.