If there’s one piece of gear I couldn’t go without (aside from a camera body, obviously), it would be the Nikon 18-200mm lens that Dad gave me a few years ago. It has been absolutely everywhere with me, usually attached to the D300, and previously the D200 between 2010-2012. It has withstood many trips overseas – to South Africa, Australia, England and France – and if I’m travelling light domestically, it will usually be the one lens I take.

Despite being a wide-range zoom lens, it does very well in creating good-quality, sharp images, and it has never given me any trouble. I love it for the versatility, it lets me jump from taking landscapes to reasonably close-up wildlife shots in an instant. It’s my go-to lens for travel and walk-about photography. It has had a fair share of mishaps – been dropped once, and lost it’s lens hood overboard on a dolphin-spotting boat – but it’s still in perfect working order and is my favourite lens to use.

Nearly all of my England photos were taken using this lens on the D300. Here’s a few of my recent favourite images taken with it.

Dad has recently done a blog about replacing the rubber focus ring grip, which started to come loose early last year. It’s now as good as new, and it was extremely easy to fix!