What lens to buy for vacation

[Zman771]

I'm planning a trip to the Redwood Forest in California and wanted some advice on what lens(es) to take with me. I have a Nikon D60 with a 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 VR lens. I can also borrow a AF-S 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 VR lens.

are there any other lenses I should consider taking? Thanks in advance for your advice!

[Sime]

You have from quite wide to quite long covered... You should get some fine photos with the right composition, lighting and patience.

Post back here when you do, we'd love to see them.

Sime

[finlayson]

You'll probably find that most of your photos are taken from a point fairly close to the trees, so you'll be using a very low focal length (e.g., 18mm) most often. If you try to take a photo from far away, you'll usually find that foliage is blocking your view. Therefore, I suspect (based on my own experience taking photos in redwood forests) that you'll hardly use the 70-300mm lens at all. In fact, I would recommend bringing along an even wider-angle lens than the 18mm (e.g., a 10-24mm), if you have one.

Another thing to note is that you'll often get a very high dynamic range (patches of sunlight amongst dark shadows) in your images, so you should consider taking exposure-bracketed photos (with a tripod, of course), and then applying HDR (or exposure blending) techniques to them.

Consider, for example, a couple of photos that I took of redwood trees in 2009:

1. in Redwood National Park, north-western California (HDR)
2. in La Honda Creek Open Space Preserve, near San Francisco (exposure blending)

Both of these photos were taken at a focal length of 10mm.

[sk66]

You are probably fine, consider taking a tripod or at least a sandbag.