I love my 18-105! How are you liking your new lens?
I did not take a lot of pictures with it and I always give any lens the chance to show where it is good. I confirm I like it at 35mm.
Reading up about the lens I see many complain and some love it, I also looked at pictures and evaluated the deformation issues that people see with it, none of that put me off.
I certainly did not see any autofocus issue, I have the 50 f1.8G and the 70-200mm VRII for action pictures, thus for a walk around lens the 18-105 does well.
It is light to carry (I generally walk with the 70-200 which is 1kg more) and it has a nice range, I tested this full car from nearby at 18mm to the detail of the tire at 105mm.
I'm amazed that this "cheap" "kit" lens performs so well, yes it feels less solid then the gold rings and since I like to manually fine tune focus that little plastic ring is not as convincing as the focus rings on top lenses. However it serves what it is made for and from what I did see it does it well, versatile, light, good AF, good VR and sharp.
All this to say that I intend to use sporadically, when:
1) I do not know what I will encounter (walk-around).
2) I expect to have limited space (the 50mm on a crop factor takes some space I find, but is was my walk around lens till now)
3) I do not want to carry my full gear or change lenses often. (E.g. the 18-105 + the 11-16 + 50 will be great for museums).
4) I expect to see things that require more then my Samsung P&S or Pentax Q (I will actually use it on the Q as super telezoom).
At the end of March it will be for my parent' s wedding anniversary party and in April I will be visiting some Italian old cities, I'm sure it will be used there.
At this moment it made me scrap (it still hurts though) the next lenses from my want list:
1) Normal wide angle: Samyang 24mm f1.4 or Nikon 28mm f1.8. => I do not use this length enough + the 18-105 will do fine here
2) Portrait lens: Nikon 85mm f1.8 or Samyang 85mm f1.4 => I do not use this enough + the 70-200 will do fine when I need this kind of photography
Still considering buying an old 500mm even if manual focus it should give better results on infinity focus then my current solutions and be a bit longer and faster.