Does this make sense?

AMOMENT

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So I purchase the Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 lens for my D7000.....I have the 50mm 1.8 but because sometimes I'm lucky to even have 10 feet between my subject and me....I needed something a bit wider that was also good in low light.

So...the 35 is really like a 50 on my crop sensor camera. Anyway....it came and I was testing it out. I bumped up the f-stop to about 3.5 and stood about 12 feet from my subject. (leaving myself plent of DOF) I nailed the focus on the eye...( in review the focus box was dead set on her eye)........I even shot with a SS of 1/200.......and yet, it was SOOOOO OOF. I know how to focus now and haven't been having issues. I suspected that perhaps my AF system wasn't detecting enough contrast to pull off sharp focus in my daughter's eyes from that far away so I got about 5 feet away and the picture, SURPRISNGLY, was so sharp.....despite the VERY narrow DOF.....

Does this make any sense?
 
...I did this test a number of times with the same result...........
 
If your values are accurate, then you should have a dof of about 4 feet-ish, so it should be fine.

Either you are just missing, or something is wrong with your new lens possibly. Maybe a pic posted will help others help to decipher.

I'd put it on a tripod and do a focus test on the new lens and see what's up.
 
not sure if this will apply, but the area that the focus point on the 35mm will seem to take up more area since its wider and has a larger area of view than the 50mm, just pulled out my camera and snapped a few our 2 year old and at 35 the center focus point covers most of his face, it could be enough to cause it to miss focus on the nose or some other part. getting closer to her you will be better able to place the focus point more or less exactly on the eye. im sure Derrel will chime in with some more detail since he has helped myself and others on here with some focus issues before and knows a good bit more on the subject
 
Yeah, I'm slightly concerned bc I put it on a tripod and got similar results...although it wasn't an official focus test....I still focused on her eyes and it shouldn't look the way it did. My settings were adequate....I might have deleted the photos but going to go look now....I got this lens on ebay....new, unused...but yet still on ebay...
 
I used it with my SB700 and got better results but flash freezes...
 
I'm thinking it's just having trouble focusing in low light. That lens isn't the greatest at correctly identifying focus in low light and will give a decent amount of false positives, especially if you have AF assist turned off.

Did you try manual focusing?
 
Is your camera set to even let you take a photo if it hasn't gotten a focus lock?
 
Oh that sucks....that it isn't great to focus in low light...=(.............I didn't try manually focusing since i usually shoot moving children..............amolitor I have it set to focus-release so that it only snaps when focus is locked...perhaps when shooting indoors I should always use my speedlight....though I dislike doing that
 
So it should not be a problem that it could not acquire focus. The fact that it took a picture says that the camera thought it was in focus, and the raw file had the focus point info as "right on the eye" no? There's something else going on. The 35/1.8 should be quite decent at focusing in low light.
 
I mean it's not terrible, but it's not pro level at nailing low light focus. Because it's not pro level. It hunts for focus a lot, and to me, on my D7000, sometimes it just seems like it gets frustrated and says "screw it, it's in focus"

I'd need to see a picture with no flash and full exif data to be able to say for sure if this is in the normal range of trouble focusing in low light, or if you got a defective copy.
 
So it should not be a problem that it could not acquire focus. The fact that it took a picture says that the camera thought it was in focus, and the raw file had the focus point info as "right on the eye" no? There's something else going on. The 35/1.8 should be quite decent at focusing in low light.

I think because the lens is known for having pretty good contrast, that sometimes it tricks some camera bodies into thinking it's in focus in low light, when it's really not. Some people say that the contrast on the 35mm f/1.8 G is in fact exaggerated, instead of just 'lifelike'. Out of my non-kit lenses, this lens is the only lens that I can consistently get to trick my D7000 into thinking things are in focus when they're really not in very certain conditions (bright-ish subject in low light).
 
if you have a printer, print one of those focus test sheets and find out for sure. don't test on people with various lighitng etc....that will eliminate the lens vs environment vs user
 

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