My 35mm f/1.8 AF-S DX Nikkor lens makes a great walkaround lens for my lightweight D40. Before that I used the 18-55mm kit lens and had no complaints.
Tokina 12-24mm is always attached to my nikon d200 - as I'm a huge sucker for wide angle photography, nevertheless I always carry a 50mm/1.8f in the camera bag as you never know how late you will stay out shooting.
Exact same. Good taste my man.Nikon 18-200 VR for everyday, Nikon 35mm-1.8 for indoors/low lighting shots.
Truthfully the modern consumer lenses for all the crap they get are hardly distinguishable from the pro glass at 5.6, and probably indistinguishable from the pro glass at f8 or f11.
Yep.
Unfortunately, once you go over about f/10 digital image sensors lose sharpness due to diffraction. So there's not much room to operate, if you have slow glass. It is not much if you only have f/5.6 --> f/8 to choose from.
Actually, diffraction sets in about f/11 on very dense sensors like the Nikon D2x, so most folks are good to go at f/11.
There's a calculator at http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/digital-camera-sensor-size.htm about half-way down the page.
My point exactly. For example, a Canon 50D that has about 15MP sensor, gives f/7.6 for diffraction limited aperture according to the calculator from the page you linked. And a slightly older Canon 40D that has about 10MP sensor, gives f/9.3 for diffraction limited aperture. This tends to creep down as time goes by and marketing departments succeed in selling us the "more megapixels is infinitely better" lie.
Sure, more detail is more detail, but we do have to "be mindful" about diffraction. There's no way I would shoot narrower than f/8 with these new models.