Nikon D810: Alaska Lens Recommendations?

First time to Alaska in early August. Recommendations for ideal landscape and wildlife lenses, considering your on boat and land experiences there? Would love to capture some incredible shots.

Thanks in advance!

Without knowing your specific plans, flexibility is key (you also may want to look up several threads on this topic also).

Were I to do an Alaska cruise tour now I would take

2 bodies

My Tamron 150-600 for denali mostly and maybe at sea

My Tamron 18-400 as general travel lens

My Sigma 24-105 art for landscapes and glacier bay and on ship

Possibly an ultrawide

If I wasn't doing Denali, I'd leave the 150-600 at home and instead of 2 nikon bodies I would have the Nikon and my sony a6000 with an 18-55 as a backup landscape. If no glacier bay or similar, probably no ultrawide.

Not much to go one here; but the obvious question is what do you have? or do you want a list of lens to purchase / rent? I returned in June I took 3 bodies D810 was one. Below is a break down of the percentage of shots I took with each lens. The 200-500 - somewhere around 97% where zoomed out to 500mm and I wish I had put the a teleconverter on. the 200-500 was used a lot in Glacier Bay, College Glaciers, Hubbard Glacier, lots of critters in the water, birds, and some on shore.

12-24 f/4 2%

24-70 f/2.8 34%

28-300 f3-5.6 8%

70-200 /f2.8 29%

105 f/2.8 1%

200-500 f/5.6 18%

15-30 f2.8 1%

Remaining 8% where with Canon G7X Mark II Power Shot

I went with a D610 and took only my 24-120, 70-300 and my 50 (and only that because it is so tiny and light). I used the 24-120 probably 75% of the time (with the 70-300 the other 25%. never took the 60 out of my cabin). Only wild life i saw was some whales while cruising one day and that is what i used the 70-300 for. I didn't do any excursions for wildlife (as it's not really my thing) so I honestly could have just used my 24-120 only in a pinch. But that is just my experience, others will have different ones.

The D810 is my main body, I've taken in on my last two trips.

Highly recommend:

Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 AFs

Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 AFs VRII or VRIII

Nikkor 300mm f/4 AFs better the new PF version.

I have tried the 200-500 Nikkor it's OK but I didn't buy it.

My big tip: Use a mono pod when able with any telephoto lens.

framer

Just got off the NCL Bliss Alaskan Maiden Voyage Cruise.

I took two DSLR bodies along with:

Tamron 150-600mm f/5-6.3 - I used this for 90% of my wildlife

photos. Whales, bears, bald eagles, and seals were all shot between 500-600mm. Even so many of them didn’t fill the frame and I had to crop in afterward in Lightroom. There’s no way I would’ve captured them with a shorter lens. I even used the lens for a few landscape shots.

Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 - This is an all purpose walkabout lens. I used this for the bulk of my shots when outdoors on excursions. It was one of two lenses that I took with me for my Northstar Trekking Helimush dogsled excursion on Norris glacier.

Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 - I used this for many of my indoor photo while onboard the ship.

Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 - I also used this for some interior shots as well as wide angle landscapes. It was the other lens I had for my dogsled excursion.

In addition I had a rain cover, speedlight, tripod that converted into a monopod, variable ND filters, and circular polarizers. Also dual and single QuickRapid straps. Just in case, I also brought a basic camera cleaning kit.

Most critical was that I brought MANY SD cards. It seemed like overkill but I found that I was filling them up quickly shooting everything with JPEG + RAW. I didn’t erase any of the cards during the cruise and backed them up nightly onto my laptop and external drive.

I also had a 360 camera that I used for onboard video footage a few times.

What I didn’t need to bring: I had a GoPro Hero 5 and a DJI Mavic Air drone that I never used. Every port in Alaska has frequent seaplane and helicopter traffic so drones are prohibited. However, I had a smartphone 3 axis gimbal that I never got around to using as well.

What would I do differently? Perhaps I could’ve left the 18-35 at home. At the time it was the newest lens in my collection so I felt compelled to bring it. In its place I could’ve brought an 8mm fisheye for some creative shots.

In my opinion the 150-600 was indispensable for the photos that I wanted. Perhaps even a 1.4x teleconvertor would have been handy to have in addition.

So at a bare minimum for Alaska I would recommend an extra long telephoto zoom like a 150-600 for the wildlife. Then a shorter zoom lens like the 18-135, 18-270, 18-300, or 18-400 could fill for the rest.