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I want to carry only one lens with Nikon D810 for pleasure travel. What lens do you recommend? I take pictures of landscape, portraiture, flower at close proximity, etc. What I have in mind presently is Tamron version of 28-300mm because it is much lighter than Nikon version and overall performance is reportedly comparable to Nikon version.

From the use cases you describe, a 300mm tele seems excessive. If I had to take ONE lens only, it would be my 35mm f/1.8, or MAYBE the kit 18-55 zoom.

Last time I took the DSLR on vacation with the intention of doing photography, I rented the Canon 18-200. (29-320 Equivalent). That range worked great for portraits and landscapes.

I recently took my a7 on a trip with me and only brought two lenses, a 40mm f/1.8 and a 135mm f/2.8. If I could only bring one, it'd be the 40mm. It worked really well for landscapes, was fast enough to shoot with inside buildings and was small enough to carry in my pocket when the 135mm was on my camera. 35-40mm works well for group portraits and landscapes. If you can find a fairly fast one with that focuses closely it should work well. Another idea might be to bring a small set of extension tubes if you plan on doing flower close-ups/macro shots and need to focus extremely close.

I shoot a D800 and travel a lot. If I was going for ONE lens, the 28-300 is not a bad choice for versatility, but it won't be delivering the sharpness that the D810 will be able to produce. My experience, especially on full-frame, is that those all-in-one zooms don't offer near the quality that they do on DX. The D8xx cameras have their quality severely compromised by lower quality glass, and that D810 will be especially so. To do it right you really need to carry two good quality lenses. If I have to strip to my bare minimum kit I bring the 24-70mm 2.8 and the 70-200 2.8. Enough zoom range and little compromise in quality.

24-70/2.8 and enjoy yourself. No extra gear. Just stunningly good people, landscape, city-scape and low light shots. Range is often overestimated, unless you are doing sports or wildlife. With that nice big sensor, you have plenty of cropping options.

This sounds like a job for the AF-S 24-120mm f/4G ED VR.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

This sounds like a job for the AF-S 24-120mm f/4G ED VR.

This or the 24-70/2.8 TheEmrys mentions above. On my 6D I'd be taking the Canon equivalent 24-105/4L and a 50/1.4 as my fast prime; on my 60D (crop) I took a 15-85 and a 50/1.8 a few years back.

Given that the D810 is going to be fairly decent at higher ISOs (maybe better than my 6D, still waiting for comparisons ), a slower, but lighter and longer zoom like JAE mentions above will probably be the best bet for a balance of portability, flexibility, and image quality.

I'll also note that there's a new 28-300 coming from Tamron that has my attention; they are very small and light for what they deliver, and Tamron has really stepped up the game on their optics- but I don't expect it to do the 20MP sensor in my 6D justice, let alone the AA-less 36MP Exmor in the D810 .

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I have decided to carry to my next oversea trip Nikon 24-120mm f4 which I already have. I previously carried with D800, the above zoom lens and Nikon 50mm f/1.4 but found myself never using 50mm /1.4.

The compromise as above is simply because of the weight of higher quality zoom lens and carrying multiple lenses. For that matter, an Ideal camera for my trip would be Nikon D610 with 24-120mm f4.