Thinking of getting a new lens for my DSLR

All the reviews that I see of this lense are pretty much persuading me to go for it.



Though as a prime lens, would it make sense for me to take just that one lense to the Philippines or should I also take my zoom lens?

Your's is a 1.5x crop Sean if I remember correctly, so a 35mm is effectively a standard lens, roughly 50mm on full frame.

The angle of view offered by a 50mm (35mm in your case) is the most all round angle of view you can get.

It's good enough for portraits and good enough for general outside views.

The primary (pardon the pun) use you will find for it is night time low light shooting where it will make possible really good shots without flash (within reason).

It will also completely out class your zoom, your zoom is ok for a 1.5 crop but I've viewed some of your shots on your picassa site and the 35mm should blow them away.

It scores 9.4 on Fred & Miranda http://www.fredmiranda.com/reviews/showproduct.php?product=380&sort=7&cat=12&page=2 (note they have the wrong picture of the lens they are showing a 60mm) a 9.4 is a superb score even on a small sample size so I would feel confident getting that one if I were you.

However you will need both lenses when you are over next year, you definitely need the wide and long as well as standard with shallow depth of field.

I have a wide zoom and long zoom over there and I still carry my standard prime, I would also say that when you are out and about at night you should have a compact camera unless you are very sure of where you are, not always safe to carry a DSLR.

Thanks oss. I'd never seen that review site before. Good find

I've read a good few reviews on the lens and all either praised it to high heaven, or they found one tiny fault with it in terms of what it offered. Seeing as my current lense is something like f/4.5 I figured that this would be a good investment. Heck, I sold the Xbox360 to get it (note, I mainly got rid of the Xbox360 as a stream of good games come out in November and I would be better off with out it)...

And Jessops are the cheapest with this, even Ebay sells these at about £190...

Been using Fred & Miranda for donkeys years, it is authoritative in terms of ratings and reviews.

Yeah a quality prime is essential in my opinion, you will learn more about photography from using a good prime as it forces you to think carefully about composition, it also opens up many more advanced techniques and gives you proper control over depth of field.

I take it this lens has not been out long enough to be available second hand, lenses generally retail at 60% of list price on Ebay.

Well, bought the lens(Nikon AF-S 35mm f1.8 G DX Lens)

Fitted a lens filter and attached it to my Nikon D5000, took a few shots around the living room to test it and so far I am very happy with it. Bought it on the high street in Jessops, they had it on sale for £189.99 but I got them to knock it down to the cheap internet price

Shall have a proper play around with it tomorrow...

Excellent!

There was a bit of an event near me at the weekend so I was out with the cam for a change.

These were all shot at f2.8

Nice, hopefully I will get something worth showing off later today

Well, had a toy around with the camera and new lens with mixed results. As an example here are 3 images.

This is one of the pictures that came out nicely, the bokeh (blur) in the background leaves the main focus point at the front pretty much the sole thing you look at in this photo




Here is an example of how the lens focused on the background instead of the person I was attempting to focus on




Here is where the lights left a nice glare just on the chest of my friend Gavin, otherwise the focus was ok. Though not as sharp as I would have liked...



More practice is required.....

Now that first one is more like it, that's a nice lens, very sharp, you got a good copy there mate! (and it does way outclass your zoom )

Second shot, well it's the camera that is focusing, you need to check what focus point it was trying to use, your Nikon software should be able to help you with this. These camera's record in the EXIF data, what actual focus point or points were selected when the shutter fired and when you view the image in the Manufacturers image processing tools there will be a setting that lets you see the focus points used (an overlay of little squares).

It is very unusual for these camera's to get the focus that wrong when the subject is so close.


Third one is a common problem on many camera's, did you try to use an outer focus point or did you use focus and recompose, i.e. centre point and then recompose the shot.

The EXIF info on 2 and 3 would be useful in diagnosing the exact cause, i.e. f number and shutter speed.

Last question have you got a hood for the lens? and have you got a protective filter like a UV filter for the lens?

Yeah, the first one is very sharp! I've uploaded the full file to Flickr


will by Manc5, on Flickr

The second photo was shot at f1.8 and ISO 2500, I thought the focus point was his head/neck, though it might be the case it drifted to the side a little, I did not focus on the middle, I used one of the outer focus points.

The third picture was shot at f1.8 and ISO of 1250... The glare I guess is because I did not attach the hood to block out the lights (I did not think they would be a problem) but I have already attached a UV filter.

In general, certainly on Canon camera's, you can let the camera select the focus point(s) and when you see the confirmation in the viewfinder, if it is not where you want it recompose and refocus, once you get it where you want then keep the focus fixed by keeping the shutter button half depressed or by using the cam's focus lock button (I don't know Nikon at all I am afraid ) then recompose again and fire.

When you know you have a tricky subject and the camera wants to focus in the wrong place then switch to single point and pick carefully. This shot is a crop from a larger one where I intentionally focused on one dial...



This was cropped out of this original...



and used the single centre point focus recompose method.

That camera is 10 years old by the way and is only 4 megapixel

As you say you probably need some practice with various settings, it takes a little time to learn this stuff, but even the best still usually have a low keeper rate being a tough editor of your own work is all important

Which UV filter did you get?

The cheap ones cause more problems than the protection they provide, the symptoms of a not so good one are exactly the kind of flare in your 3rd photo.

There is no need for a UV filter with a DSLR as the camera does not care about UV, the only reason for having one is that it protects the lens from the weather and other hazards, I had an expensive Hoya Pro UV filter on my 24-105 a while back and once dropped the camera bag onto a hard surface, the filter smashed but I was able to extract all of it without any bits going near the lens, the lens was still immaculate it was well worth the investment

The problem with filters is that they are another bit of (potentially dodgy) glass the light has to go through before it hits your lensor, the cheaper ones can cause or exaggerate flare, however the lens hood would most likely have prevented this.

Even the best lenses suffer from flare my 16-35 zoom is particularly bad (wides are always bad for flare) you just have to look out for it at the time you capture the shot, you can usually see it in the viewfinder.

Took some more shots tonight after watching Conan the Barbarian (quite enjoyed the movie)..

All of these were shot at ISO 3200 with f1.8... And on a couple of shots I got the dreaded glare

Try it without the UV filter Sean, the flare is coming from the blue lighting in the distance, it's unusual for it to be that bad with what is not likely to be a very high EV (Exposure Value) light source compared to the foreground.

It's impossible to completely eliminate flare in scene's that are backlit or contain a bright point source (the sun) or small bright highlight source in the background, but it's not usually so bad.

Cheap UV filters really can cause this.

Apart from that, nice shots, try correcting the colour temperature and you will find you get much better colour.

Yeah, I didn't notice it glaring against the sensor when I took the shots, but it was there when I loaded them up on the PC..

Sometimes I like flare! Like on a sunny day when I take a shot that includes a lot of blue sky and the sun is off in the distance.. I just like the look of that kind of flare.

I did not know this until you mentioned it.. I bought it to protect my lense as I was told by the guy that sold me the camera it help prevent minor scratches and stuff getting on the lens. The selling pitch was something like "If you scratch it, you lose a £10 lens filter instead of a £150+ lens".. Can lenses get scratched easily? Dust and stuff I can live with, I have a cleaner pen I carry with the camera.

Hmmm, I did. Though I did not change too much about the shots. Made them a little brighter, increased the exposure and some slight increases in vibrance. But no major changes! I wanted to see what this lens would do in a night time setting without the flash

Me too

He told you the truth but normally it's worth spending a bit more on the filter, Hoya filters are generally good multicoated filters. Lenses can get scratched but it's not that easy, though generally you just don't want to have to clean it ever if you don't have to, hence the filter. Be careful with those cleaner pens, I would not use one myself, best to get a spectacle cloth and spectacle cleaning fluid from the optician's and use that to clean the filter rather than the lens.

A big advantage of having a filter is that in lousy weather I have been known to just grab my t-shirt and dry the filter, I would never do that to the lens

Hmmmm, reckon I will stick with a filter then but try and get a good one to take to Pinas

Before you spend money on another filter, do the test take some shots into that kind of light with the filter off and see if there is much difference, if not then it's actually just the lens that is a bit sensitive to internal reflections.