Which is the BEST Nikon zoom lens?

[lizbebbington]

I have a few different lenses but want to upgrade my most used one to a high quality zoom lens. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Cheers!

[TheMoons678]

What do you have? (lenses, body)
What do you shoot?
How much are you willing to spend?

[ptremb3043]

In order to give a knowledgeable response more info is needed. What do you photograph most, looking at your old photos what focal range are you using the most, what kind of lenses do you currently have, and lastly what kind of budget do you have.


I was to slow.

[lizbebbington]

I have a NikdonD80, a 50m lens, a fisheye and on normal zoom one I wouldn't know..but it's not the highest quality. I need to upgrade to a realllly decent body in the next few years but I'm willing to spend up to 1.5k on a new lens if it is great quality.

Im also in my last year or my photography degree, so what I shoot varies a lot, but I would say I shoot a lot of landscapes/working with long exposures, and I want to get more into wedding photography, so a primie lens isn't always great for that!

Cheers

[TheMoons678]

You could get a super-wide angle and a wide-to-mid zoom.

Superwide like 12-24mm or 10-24mm
Wide-to-mid range like a Nikon 24-70mm 2.8

You may get some mixed opinions on Nikon vs 3rd party.

It sounds like you have a very basic setup and are suddenly ready to spend a lot of money. In my not-so-expert opinion, I'd suggest buying several lenses to fill in the gaps of your lens arsenal and buy used/3rd party.

I'm looking at getting a tamron 28-75mm 2.8 tomorrow for around $360.
You could get a nikon AFS 80-200mm 2.8 for around $850.
You would then still have some budget left to invest in a superwide and speedlight like sb600 if you get both.

[jdepould]

The 2.8 zooms are universally great for their respective tasks, beyond that, we need more info.