Nikon 50mm F/1.8 AF-D Nikkor
This little Nikon 50mm f1.8 AF-D is a real gem. Its the most brilliant prime lens in the history of mankind.
Seriously, at around NZ$200, this lens is a no brainer. Its bigger brother the 50mm f1.4 is hands down better but heck, for just a stop faster its twice the price, & having owned both, I hardly miss my 1.4 because in terms of colour rendition & contrast I find this as good as the 1.4D version.
As usual, these are just my opinions & experiences, no is paying me to write these. I will tell what I feel is good or bad.
If you are squeezed on a budget & cant decide what to get for decent portraits, decent macro, a little bit of fun, all packed into one, then this is your lense. Pets, flowers, nature, throw it in, this baby will do it rather well.
Above image courtesy of Nikon USA.
A lot of people have written nice things about these 50mm prime lenses & I thought I might give you a few points to consider around all of them.
For you Canon folks out there, the canon f/1.8 is pretty much the same benefits so go for it, but this article related to my Nikkor lens.
Points to double check before you buy:
For $200 you cant go wrong, but then with every lens there will be some downsides.
On any DX sensor camera
The effective focal length will be equal to 75mm, thats a bit too narrow sometimes. The plus side is that being FX compliant, this lense will work just fine without having to worry about crop modes when you do buy a 35mm full frame sensor FX camera dslr body someday.No Auto Focus on entry level cameras
This lens doesnt have a built in AF motor so will not auto focus on the new D3100 & D5100.No AutoFocus override, ie, if your in af mode, & the camera is focusing where you dont want it to, you cant just grab the ring. You need to flick the body's AF switch in Manual & then change the focus, thats a precious few seconds lost when youre taking pics of infants or pets for example.
Now this isnt a big deal unless you intend to use it for fast moving subject or sports all of the time, which really isnt the intent with this $200 piece. Do-able though, dont underestimate it, but yes not easy.
Its not the fastest at focusing especially since its screw driven by your camera & doesnt have its own AF motor, but dont let the noise fool you into believe its slow, its just an illusion, its good enough.
Low light performance is impressive as expected.
In low light, this lense is brilliant. It focuses beautifully in low light thanks to that large aperture.
On my D90 with ISO2000 f1.8 I can take photos at 1/250 of a second in candle light!
It also has an aperture ring, now thats something you need on older film cameras, making this lense compatible on almost any Nikon out there since the 60s I think, I could be wrong just double check if youre buying it for an old film slr body.
The perture ring also comes in handy if you want to get onto eBay or TradeMe or whatever auction site you use & buy some cheap older manual focus teleconverts which are otherwise optically ok but just wont focus or meter. I would recommend using the lense with TCs of this type, except when trying to do some macro work, which I will explain later in this post.
Bokeh Characteritics:
This lens bokehs nicely, but not quite to my taste. At $200 though, everything about this lense is brilliant. But the bokeh is a tad too sharp, & though subject isolation is good, its not the best.
It gets nicer when you step down to f2.8, but the inherent quality of this lense is such that the character of the bokeh doesnt change much.
To me, the king of bokehs is (oddly enough a zoom) my beautiful Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 VR. Even the older Nikon 80-200mm f2.8 AF-S is pretty good, but the new VR version has something special. Its not the sharpness in the bokeh, its the detail without the sharpness that I just love. Well at $3000+, that lens better be, so you cant realistically expect the humble $200 50 f/1.8 to beat it.
Now mind you bokeh is a very subjective thing, you might love this lense.
Let me throw you some examples of the bokeh at f/1.8 & you can decide for yourself.
These are straight off camera at f1.8 no manipulation what so ever except a simple resize to make them just a tad smaller.
Now this image is perhaps a more interesting example. Very faint Bokeh all over the place. Here you see the subject isolation & bokeh dont look the best. Look at how the twigs look like this was taken in excessive wind, it wasnt, it has just been blurred like that.
Feel free to have a read of Ken Rockwell's blog on the 50mm f1.8D as well. Though he doesnt talk bout the bokeh & subject isolation per say, 2 characteristics which are very important to me in any fasy large aperture lens, its still nice to read.
Look at how versatile it is:
The other brilliant thing is you invert this lens on a camera body (ie mounting or even just holding it with the objective toward the camera mount) & it turns into a brilliant macro lens! Of course it wont give you automatic exposure metering or auto focus, but if youve got a steady hand, well, its easy.
Check this out. As usual, no modifications made, straight off camera with a simple resize done just to make it visible on a small screen area.
First a photo of the NZ 10c coin taken at the minimum closeup distance of 45cms:
Not great, but check this next picture out.
It can be a $200 macro lens.
All I did was hold the lense upside down on the body (inverted) & went as close as around 3cms from the coin! I had to use Manual mode ofcourse, set the flash off iTTL into manual mode & set the power to get the right exposure levels. In this case I used 1/200 shutter, F8, BuiltIn flash firing at its lowest 1/128th power setting.
Impressive for a $200 device isnt it!
Ensure youre not in excessive windy or dirty conditions, you dont want to get it all dirty.
You can buy a $10 lense inverter from eBay or wherever which measn you dont have to get all fissly & hold the lense with one hand while doing this.
Saves you buying a $600 60mm f2.8 micro Nikkor macro lens, unless of course youre doing extensive macro work, in which case go for it.
So, if you dont mind the narrow field of view in DX & a bit of brightness in the bokeh, this is a great buy. Thanks Nikon!
Hi Fuzzy, Great explanation with ISO2000
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