a new prime lense

leed222

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Hey there everyone...after a few months of shooting with my kit lense 18-55mm, I decided to check out fixed prime lenses for their all around sharpness and the fact that you really learn to move around and learn to shoot pictures much more as opposed to standing in one place and just zooming in for the shot. I was really impressed with the Nikon 35mm F1/8 lense after many visits to my local camera store, and the advice and willingness of the employees there to freely let me play around with it...so much so that I went and purchased it a few days ago. After a few days of shooting, I'm wondering if there are any particular settings in the camera to adjust or advice to help me along with taking great pictures? I'm really liking this glass and any advice would be welcomed...thanks
 
There are no hard and fast rules, just guidelines...for example....wide-open is the f/1.8 lens aperture; moderate apertures are f/3.5 to f/7.1. it is in the moderate aperture range, like say f/4 or f/5.6 that the 35mm f/1.8 G lens is probably at its optical peak performance. For making shots that have a lot of distance from near to far in-focus, you often need to move to what we used to call "well-stopped down", which basically means from about f/8 to f/22.

Light levels during daylight times usually will allow fast shutter speeds with the lens at the f/4 to f/5.6 range; in really bright light, f/8 can be a great aperture that gives a very fast speed like 1/1000 second. Try some shots at the f/4.5 to f/5.6 range during the daylight...it's really a nice aperture range for things from 15 feet to miles distant.

There's a difference in image sharpness when the shutter speed is 1/500 second, or faster, like 1/650 or 1/800, as compared with slower speeds like say 1/60 to 1/200 second. Although speeds like 1/200 second might seem "fast", that's not the same thing as 1/500 or 1/640 or 1/800 second.

Indoors or in really dim light, the f/1.8 to f/2.8 range lets in a lot of light, and can work great if you elevate the ISO level to 1,000 to 3,200.
 
Check the Nikon website for any updates. If the site indicates there is a firmware update for that specific lens, install that update on your camera. Most likely, if your computer has recognized data received from your camera when this lens was used, the update has already been applied. If you have any questions regarding specific firmware updates, just contact Nikon tech support. They can usually tell you whether the firmware version your camera is running requires any updates.
 
Thanks for the tips, Derrel. I've been shooting closeups of various objects, mainly plants and flowers, and experimenting with different appertures. Im still struggling with sharpness in my photos. For example, at F2.8, im getting a nice blurred background, but for some reason my focus seems off when i looked back at the pics. Again, thanks for the advice
 
All lenses are compromises.

If you have a lens that is

- prime (making a zoom actually comes with a very high price, thats why primes typically have so much more aperture)
- of low maximum aperture (a f/5.6 lens can be done a lot easier than a f/4, f/2.8, f/2, f/1.4, ... lens)
- large (smaller lenses again result in higher lens errors or higher complexity)
- not optimized for video (like no focus breathing, which is for example what a single group will do)
- single group (like for a large camera - you focus by moving the lens forward and backward, otherwise its fixed)
- using better types of surfaces, namely aspherical lenses
- not using extra trickery (such as telephoto and retrofocus lenses, who are of much higher complexity)
- working with a large sensor with large pixels
- probably more stuff I'm just forgetting right now

the image quality will very likely be excellent, easily, even with few elements. Plus, with few elements, less general errors will occur - for really any glas, no matter how well done, introduces errors, thus fewer elements is always the goal.

Thats the way large format lenses are built, which are usually optically superior to everything else. Except there are telephoto lenses for large format, obviously.

Any aspect that derives from the above list will cause increased complexity of the construction and thus is more phrone to lens errors.

Zooms can be extremely sharp, if you make the effort. At least if they are only 3x or less in their focal range. However, there are a lot more lens errors than just lack of sharpness.
 

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