Nikon D3000 new all purpose lens required

[B'stard Child]

Have had a 18 - 70 lens AFS - DX for a long time as a general purpose lens - It's not happy and it's hit and miss if it's going to allow the camera to take a picture.

I initially thought it was the camera but I've tried all my other lenses (Original kit lenses 18 - 55 & 55 - 200 zoom, a longer 70 - 300 zoom and my 35 Prime all work perfectly) so I'm pretty sure it's the lens that is unhappy.

Having finished the holiday using the std kit lens I'm not as happy with my pictures taken after the 18 - 70 lens started giving me issues and I swaped to the original 18 - 55 kit lens

Seem to be quite a range of other AS-F DX lenses out there from 18 to 70, 105, 140 and up

Any recommendations?

Do I just

Replace like for like? (on the grounds that I've never felt limited by the lens - it doesn't make the camera feel too heavy and I've always been happy with it)

Or

Replace with one with a little more reach hoping the weight isn't going to increase too much?

Edited by B'stard Child on Monday 10th June 20:14

[GravelBen]

I've had good results from the 18-140 as an all-rounder, a noticeable improvement over the 18-105 I had before it (and the 18-70 before that) and not too heavy/bulky.

[B'stard Child]

GravelBen said:

I've had good results from the 18-140 as an all-rounder, a noticeable improvement over the 18-105 I had before it (and the 18-70 before that) and not too heavy/bulky.

Thank you - interesting that you been thro three progressively and found the larger zooms better for you.

I only bought the 18 - 70 because I bought the 70 - 300 to get tighter motorsports shots

Original kit lenses were 18 - 55 and 55 - 200 (seemed logical before I bought the prime to have no overlap)

[wildoliver]

To be honest and it's not answering your question, I'd upgrade the body. It's a pretty old digital camera now the 3000, and old digital cameras don't age like old film cameras, we always thought of a film body as the box that held the lens, but a digital body has the brains that deal with how well the picture turns out on automatic modes, autofocusing and of course the "film" the sensor. I'd say from your comment of not being as happy with the pictures from your other lenses as you were from this one, the quality lift you will see from a body upgrade will make you very happy at minimal cost.

I suppose the main question though is why weren't you as happy with the pics from the other lenses? Because the 35 in particular is a lovely lens, the 18-55 is a bit meh, but could it be that you found you were missing the range and ability to get your composition rather than quality?

My go to camera for years now has been a d7100 with a 35mm lens on it. It's taken thousands of pictures for books and some general interest pics, I have lots of other lenses but genuinely enjoy the fast prime lens and just move closer or further away to set the shot up, only time I miss a zoom is the rare occasion I can't get closer, but for what I shoot it's not a problem in general. If it were I'd probably just buy a long Tele and a serious wide angle.

I have recently (well a year or so ago and barely picked it up sadly) bought a Fuji xt5 with a zoom on it, and I've enjoyed the package with the zoom, but I'm not convinced I'll get better pictures out of it.

Just musings.

[B'stard Child]

wildoliver said:

To be honest and it's not answering your question, I'd upgrade the body. It's a pretty old digital camera now the 3000, and old digital cameras don't age like old film cameras, we always thought of a film body as the box that held the lens, but a digital body has the brains that deal with how well the picture turns out on automatic modes, autofocusing and of course the "film" the sensor. I'd say from your comment of not being as happy with the pictures from your other lenses as you were from this one, the quality lift you will see from a body upgrade will make you very happy at minimal cost.

I got the D3000 "pre-owned" from another PH'r craigb84 at a great price back in 2012 after my previous DSLR (D40 which I got in 2006) was stolen

(I had some lenses already so made sense to stay with a DX format)

So bearing that in mind it's probably 14 years old

wildoliver said:

I suppose the main question though is why weren't you as happy with the pics from the other lenses? Because the 35 in particular is a lovely lens, the 18-55 is a bit meh, but could it be that you found you were missing the range and ability to get your composition rather than quality?

I buggered my leg up on holiday - if I'd been a bit more mobile I'd have slapped the prime on and got loads of exercise but as I was struggling I used the original kit 18 - 55 lens - And yes it's meh - I did miss the range but the quality of the photos just aren't as good as I would have expected from my 18 - 70

wildoliver said:

My go to camera for years now has been a d7100 with a 35mm lens on it. It's taken thousands of pictures for books and some general interest pics, I have lots of other lenses but genuinely enjoy the fast prime lens and just move closer or further away to set the shot up, only time I miss a zoom is the rare occasion I can't get closer, but for what I shoot it's not a problem in general. If it were I'd probably just buy a long Tele and a serious wide angle.

<snip>

Just musings.

Appreciate the musings - only time I use the DSLR is for motorsport, car shows or holidays (always cities rather than beaches) I have a pocket sized Nikon compact for everyday use

[GravelBen]

B'stard Child said:

GravelBen said:

I've had good results from the 18-140 as an all-rounder, a noticeable improvement over the 18-105 I had before it (and the 18-70 before that) and not too heavy/bulky.

Thank you - interesting that you been thro three progressively and found the larger zooms better for you.

I only bought the 18 - 70 because I bought the 70 - 300 to get tighter motorsports shots

Original kit lenses were 18 - 55 and 55 - 200 (seemed logical before I bought the prime to have no overlap)

It's not just having more zoom range (though that is certainly a useful bonus) but sharpness, image quality and focus speed etc seems to have improved too especially with the 18-140, I guess Nikon have improved their design with each newer version.

Being common kit lenses they are generally easy to find cheap second hand.

I've heard the 18-200 is a bit more optically compromised to give the extra zoom, but I haven't had one myself to give an informed comment there.

An 18-140 and 70-300VR combo would be hard to beat for zoom lens performance on a budget, I find having overlap between zoom ranges is actually very useful as you often don't want to be stopping and swapping lenses all the time.

[B'stard Child]

GravelBen said:

<snip> An 18-140 and 70-300VR combo would be hard to beat for zoom lens performance on a budget, I find having overlap between zoom ranges is actually very useful as you often don't want to be stopping and swapping lenses all the time.

Sorry to snip this down but one point of interest (slightly OT) but I never use the VR function on any lenses I have - I found it really slowed down the rate of shots on burst function when taking motorsport pictures and I’ve never seen any benefit using it in other scenarios - I may be wrong in doing this??

[spookly]

For all rounders on DX DSLR over time I had the 18-140, 18-200 and 18-300.
All comparable, but get more expensive and slightly larger with longer range.

All good lenses for general walkabout without lens swapping.

[Simpo Two]

B'stard Child said:

GravelBen said:

<snip> An 18-140 and 70-300VR combo would be hard to beat for zoom lens performance on a budget, I find having overlap between zoom ranges is actually very useful as you often don't want to be stopping and swapping lenses all the time.

Sorry to snip this down but one point of interest (slightly OT) but I never use the VR function on any lenses I have - I found it really slowed down the rate of shots on burst function when taking motorsport pictures and I’ve never seen any benefit using it in other scenarios - I may be wrong in doing this??

I didn't know VR slowed down fps - not sure why it would.

But if you're taking motorsport - which I assume is lots of panning, you don't need VR anyway. VR is for when you want to reduce camera movement - particularly useful on long lenses. For example when you can't get a fast enough shutter speed when the aperture and ISO are as far as you want them.

My two main lenses are 17-55mm f2.8 - which I got for weddings but it's now my default lens - and the 70-300VR (on a DX sensor)

[GravelBen]

The only reason I can think of for VR slowing down fps is if was on an automatic shutter setting, the camera might see VR turned on and decides that means it can use a slower shutter speed which happens to be slower than the max fps rate.

But sometimes settings can have unexpected side-effects - for example I found Nikon's auto lens correction dramatically reduced the buffer of my old D7000, it would only shoot a handful of clicks at full fps and then slow down to about 1fps. Presumably it was using the buffer memory for processing lens correction adjustments to images as well.

I agree that VR isn't generally useful for motorsport photography though, mostly either you are panning (and so you don't want it to try and correct for camera movement) or you want to freeze the subject movement which needs higher shutter speed anyway, VR doesn't help with that (only with camera movement).

I mentioned the 70-300VR as there are a few different 70-300 lens versions but the VR version is widely regarded as the best performing by a fair margin.

Edited by GravelBen on Wednesday 12th June 02:19

[B'stard Child]

spookly said:

For all rounders on DX DSLR over time I had the 18-140, 18-200 and 18-300.
All comparable, but get more expensive and slightly larger with longer range.

All good lenses for general walkabout without lens swapping.

Thank you

[B'stard Child]

Simpo Two said:

B'stard Child said:

GravelBen said:

<snip> An 18-140 and 70-300VR combo would be hard to beat for zoom lens performance on a budget, I find having overlap between zoom ranges is actually very useful as you often don't want to be stopping and swapping lenses all the time.

Sorry to snip this down but one point of interest (slightly OT) but I never use the VR function on any lenses I have - I found it really slowed down the rate of shots on burst function when taking motorsport pictures and I’ve never seen any benefit using it in other scenarios - I may be wrong in doing this??

I didn't know VR slowed down fps - not sure why it would.

But if you're taking motorsport - which I assume is lots of panning, you don't need VR anyway. VR is for when you want to reduce camera movement - particularly useful on long lenses. For example when you can't get a fast enough shutter speed when the aperture and ISO are as far as you want them.

My two main lenses are 17-55mm f2.8 - which I got for weddings but it's now my default lens - and the 70-300VR (on a DX sensor)

I could be completely wrong but it's what I experienced and I've never used it since - next time I'm at Snet I'll have another play with it when I'm not panning

[B'stard Child]

To round this up - I hadn't actually realised how old my D3000 is (knocking on the door of 15 years old) Whilst it would be nice to upgrade the body for a newer version I'm really quite fond of my D3000 and I'm in the "it does everything I want and I don't feel I need newer - yet" camp (I did however get a bit of bonus at work earlier in the year that I've tucked away - I had briefly considered putting it towards a full frame DSLR but ruled it out as a frivolous expense and I'd need to replace at least 3 of my lenses. Maybe I should consider another cropped sensor DSLR so that I don't have the expense of new lenses?

On the buggered lens topic I've found a used 18 - 140 lens on the internet in stated as new condition and it should be with me in a few days

I look forward to trying it out and hopefully finding it ticks all my boxes and doesn't make the camera much heavier.

Thank you all who contributed - much appreciated

[B'stard Child]

Oh and for the first time since I got the camera I've checked the shutter count 58,126

Shutter count when I got it was under 2,000

[silentbrown]

Too late, but the 18-300 is great too. https://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/18-300mm-vr.htm

[GravelBen]

B'stard Child said:

To round this up - I hadn't actually realised how old my D3000 is (knocking on the door of 15 years old) Whilst it would be nice to upgrade the body for a newer version I'm really quite fond of my D3000 and I'm in the "it does everything I want and I don't feel I need newer - yet" camp (I did however get a bit of bonus at work earlier in the year that I've tucked away - I had briefly considered putting it towards a full frame DSLR but ruled it out as a frivolous expense and I'd need to replace at least 3 of my lenses. Maybe I should consider another cropped sensor DSLR so that I don't have the expense of new lenses?

Definitely worth looking into - I have a D7200 which I really like, over the years I went D50-D80-D7000-D7200 finding a big step up in performance (sensor and AF etc) each time.

The D7xxx have an advantage over the D5xxx and D3xxx in that they have an AF drive motor in the camera body, so you can still play around with older AF-D lenses and have autofocus, the smaller bodies without the drive motor can only autofocus with AF-S where the motor is in the lens.

[Simpo Two]

B'stard Child said:

I had briefly considered putting it towards a full frame DSLR but ruled it out as a frivolous expense and I'd need to replace at least 3 of my lenses. Maybe I should consider another cropped sensor DSLR so that I don't have the expense of new lenses?

Nothing wrong with DX - I use a D500. Tried FX but preferred the angle of view of my lenses on DX.

[wildoliver]

GravelBen said:

B'stard Child said:

To round this up - I hadn't actually realised how old my D3000 is (knocking on the door of 15 years old) Whilst it would be nice to upgrade the body for a newer version I'm really quite fond of my D3000 and I'm in the "it does everything I want and I don't feel I need newer - yet" camp (I did however get a bit of bonus at work earlier in the year that I've tucked away - I had briefly considered putting it towards a full frame DSLR but ruled it out as a frivolous expense and I'd need to replace at least 3 of my lenses. Maybe I should consider another cropped sensor DSLR so that I don't have the expense of new lenses?

Definitely worth looking into - I have a D7200 which I really like, over the years I went D50-D80-D7000-D7200 finding a big step up in performance (sensor and AF etc) each time.

The D7xxx have an advantage over the D5xxx and D3xxx in that they have an AF drive motor in the camera body, so you can still play around with older AF-D lenses and have autofocus, the smaller bodies without the drive motor can only autofocus with AF-S where the motor is in the lens.

I feel your love for the 7 series, I bought a Fuji as I wanted to do some video and I'm honest enough to admit a new toy. Initially considered a zfc but hated it ironically.

When I got the Fuji I considered selling my 7100, which is like new and got laughable quotes for it, as I love it so much and have a lot of classic lenses which work wonderfully with it I've kept it and don't regret it one bit.

[GravelBen]

wildoliver said:

I feel your love for the 7 series, I bought a Fuji as I wanted to do some video and I'm honest enough to admit a new toy. Initially considered a zfc but hated it ironically.

When I got the Fuji I considered selling my 7100, which is like new and got laughable quotes for it, as I love it so much and have a lot of classic lenses which work wonderfully with it I've kept it and don't regret it one bit.

Funny enough I've done quite similar - went Fuji to reduce weight/bulk for hiking etc, but I still had a good selection of lenses for the D7200 and there isn't much of a second-hand market for longer lenses for Fuji. And the D7200 probably wouldn't be worth all that much to sell.

So I've just kept the D7200 as well and mostly use it for motorsport and wildlife. Feels a bit over the top sometimes having 2 different systems (I wouldn't do it that way starting from scratch) but already having longer lenses for the Nikon combined with massive battery life made it a good option for me to keep it for that use.