Ideal lens collection ?

[surplusshooter]

Lets just say that you own a Nikon crop sensor DSLR like the Nikon D5100 and your budget limits you to a grand total of only (4) lenses. You want Nikon brand lenses only and you want these four lens to cover just about any reasonably normal type of photography that you may encounter. Question: Which (4) Nikon brand lenses would "YOU" choose ??? Note: Your lens choices must be non-pro "affordable" Nikon brand lenses. Lets have some fun here with your lens choices and opinions. I will start it off....lens choice #1 Nikon 35mm F/1.8G, lens choice #2 Nikon 18-55mm F/3.5-5.6G, lens choice #3 Nikon 55-300mm F/4.5-5.6G, lens choice #4 Nikon 40mm "macro" F/2.8G. Come on guys and gals, jump in here with "your" choices. If you think that the four lenses that I picked are bad, just tell me so and help me pick a better selection.

[zig-123]

Nice idea, but can't play because limiting your lens selection to Nikon only prevents the use of a lot of really fine non-pro(as you called them) or (I'll call them) budget lenses that cost less than Nikons and yet outperform them.

Also, your style of photography may be completely different than mine which makes the ability to use other brands of lenses even more important.

Just my .02

[Ozzie_Traveller]

G'day SS

Reading the post header I thought "this fellas got it bad..." wanting 4 lenses to cover 'everything'
Then Zig puts it very nicely

My 2-bob's worth -
There is no answer to this Q

Are you a sports follower? or a macro follower? or a weekend happysnapper? - coz each will have a very different 4-lens schedule

From my film-camera days [ie full frame] my lens bag for general-purpose weekend & holiday stuff was:-
24mm + 28-105mm + 100-300mm + 1000mm + 2xTC + 2-bodies

Thank goodness that these days we've got 'real-good-quality' superzooms so that I no longer have to carry around a truck load of stuff

Maybe not the answer you were expecting, but I hope it helps in some way
Regards, Phil

[TCav]

85mm f/1.8G AF-S
85mm f/3.5G AF-S DX Micro ED VR-II
16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G AF-S DX ED VR
70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S VR

At the very least, I've got 85mm covered.

[surplusshooter]

Thanks everyone for the replies.The replies from "Zig-123" and "OZZie Traveller" are both very well stated. They are both correct, I am limiting myself by choosing only Nikon brand lenses and it's very true, not everyone has the same style of photography. So, there really is no answer to my question. And to "TCav", thanks for playing along. I really liked your four lens selection and what you listed really made me stop and think. Not one of the four lens that you selected were the same as the ones that I listed. I guess this just proves what everyone one else has stated. Thanks again everyone, it was fun and I learned something.

[TCav]

Perhaps a different way to structure this would be to specify a budget (say, $1,500, new only, available through major retailers), but allow us to cross brand lines. We could pick as many or as few lenses as we wanted.

[zig-123]

Originally Posted by TCav

Perhaps a different way to structure this would be to specify a budget (say, $1,500, new only, available through major retailers), but allow us to cross brand lines. We could pick as many or as few lenses as we wanted.

Or coming at the subject from a different angle completely by asking people, first what type of photography they are most interested in, what lenses they use that best meet those needs and why did they choose that particular lens over others that serve the basically the same purpose.

Now, you're opening up the discussion to a much broader audience.

Zig

[Duff]

I guess it's better to activate this subject, not to create new...
I'm a sony nex user for a few years, and want to get in dslr water to get more creative, more options, more lenses, viewfinder, faster shooting...
I'm buying nikon d5200...it suit my needs which is family(kids, light sports) photo, and getting little creative with nature,animal shots and so on...still nothing professional...for now!
I'm thinking of buyng 3 lenses(all for about 500$, more less)...regular zoom, portrait prime and some light tele zoom! Almost certain is 55-200mm because I can get it alone in a kit, and it's pretty good for it's price as I heard. I'm close to buy 50mm 1.8g, for portraits...
My biggest dilema is about regular zoom...I supose it's gonna be at least 50% on the camera, and the other 50% is between lenses I mentiond. Not very fond of kit 18-55, so I'm searching for other solution...budget is 200-250$. Many people loves tamron 17-50 or sigma 17-50...I'm leaning towards one of them...I can get lightly used or refurb for my budget. Is it worth? Does it perform better in terms of sharpness, color, creativity? Or just stick with kit lens and save money for maybe another prime someday.
What do you think? Suggest any lens...

[TCav]

The unstabilized Tamron 17-50/2.8 is excellent, the stabilized version not so much; the Sigma is better. But I'd go with the Sigma 17-70/2.8-4.0 instead.

And I'd get the Tamron 70-300 instead of the Nikon 55-200.

[Duff]

Thanx for responce. Hmm...sigma 17-70 wasn't on my wish list...I'll definitely think about that lens too. And what about nikon 16-85? Bit wider, maybe is the best choice of all? Mahy people were satisfied.
And for 55-200, I know that isn't excellent lens, and not tooo far, but it's so cheap with kit...it's less than 120$ new!!! For that price, it's hard to beat...tamron is more than 200$ used! And I'm more into regular zoom, just starting and exploring long tele lens...55-200 is good start I think? Quality I search is in regular zoom...better to spend more on that, am I right?