Best Budget Lens for Sunset Photos (February, 2024)

New Zealand is a place with unique over-water sunsets, and local photographers enjoy capturing them. The same goes for myself; not shooting a great sunset would be a serious miss for me. So, I've tried many different cameras and lenses, and looking back through my photos, I can tell you that the best ones were made with the same lens - Nikon AF-P DX 70-300mm F4.5-6.3G ED VR.

The lens is extremely sharp, reproduces colors accurately, has high resolution, and does not catch flares. It allows zooming in onto the sun disk and distant clouds over the horizon. It is also affordable and lightweight.

My sunset photos have received positive feedback on Gurushots, and most of them were taken using the Nikon lens. For example, the above photo managed to achieve multiple Top 100 rankings. Many other otherwise great lenses I tried struggled with harsh sunset light, color reproduction, ghosting, and flares.

Please note that shooting sunsets with an optical viewfinder can be damaging to your eyes. I recommend using Live View mode.