Nikon 35mm lens
Apr. 3rd, 2015 11:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinuePicked up a new lens yesterday, a Nikon 35mm f/1.8G AF-S DX. I've had my eye on it for a while, but was skeptical because it's inexpensive (for a lens), around $200 new. One of those too good to be true deals where I mentally add "for $200" to every five-star review. Ciro and I finally made the trek over to New England Photo, the nearby one-room Nikon shop crammed with used cameras and odd bits of kit, because he's been asked to shoot a group portrait of Mom's choir and a 35 is the right lens for that. (Basically, it gives you some width, a little more than your naked eye, but is still flattering to most faces. It makes rooms seem more expansive than they are, but feels documentary.)* By coincidence, it was the proprietor's birthday. Also by coincidence, he's Armenian and was curious about Gandolfi's new organ symphony "Ascending Light," which we saw premiere last week. (It's excellent.)
Lens is sharp and fast (does well in low light), as promised. It's compact and seems rugged. The only downsides are (1) it's noisy when it shifts focus; you can hear and feel the metal moving against itself, and (2) it vignettes a little (goes black at the corners). That's hard to avoid once you start to get wide unless you're buying thousand-dollar lenses (it takes layers of extremely precise glass to go wide and keep the picture plane flat all the way to the corners, an optics problem that can be summarized as round peg square hole), but I'm hoping it will still work cinematographically - I haven't tested yet, but I suspect the crop that takes video widescreen instead of 4:3 will disappear those corners whether I want it to or not.
There is still snow piled on the ground, but I've hauled the raspberry plant out of the garage and back up to the balcony. It's supposed to be cold hardy to -30, so it's probably safe. Probably.
Dyed eggs, then gold glazed them so they look dragon. Listened to the Moulin Rouge soundtrack while so doing; seemed sufficently color-saturated.
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* I use the Nikon D800 body, so my lens measurements are "true". The 35 lens on a digital body with a smaller sensor would give the range of about what a 50 does on my camera or a film camera.
Lens is sharp and fast (does well in low light), as promised. It's compact and seems rugged. The only downsides are (1) it's noisy when it shifts focus; you can hear and feel the metal moving against itself, and (2) it vignettes a little (goes black at the corners). That's hard to avoid once you start to get wide unless you're buying thousand-dollar lenses (it takes layers of extremely precise glass to go wide and keep the picture plane flat all the way to the corners, an optics problem that can be summarized as round peg square hole), but I'm hoping it will still work cinematographically - I haven't tested yet, but I suspect the crop that takes video widescreen instead of 4:3 will disappear those corners whether I want it to or not.
There is still snow piled on the ground, but I've hauled the raspberry plant out of the garage and back up to the balcony. It's supposed to be cold hardy to -30, so it's probably safe. Probably.
Dyed eggs, then gold glazed them so they look dragon. Listened to the Moulin Rouge soundtrack while so doing; seemed sufficently color-saturated.
--
* I use the Nikon D800 body, so my lens measurements are "true". The 35 lens on a digital body with a smaller sensor would give the range of about what a 50 does on my camera or a film camera.
