Should I buy this lens?

[Wilson1990]

I'm looking to do some Portrait/still life/close up photos and I thought this lens looked nice for the price.

http://www.wilkinson.co.uk/store/product.php?productid=16308&cat=434&page=1

The thing is, I have a D40 (and im sure you all know of the autofocus business) I know(read: I'm pretty sure) this lens won't autofocus with my camera. That's why im not sure if I should bother buying it or not.

Please help?

Also, if anyone knows of any similar lenses that will autofocus, could you help me out? Cheers!

 

[osirus]

the lens.. i just got and really like it so far


im pretty sure it wont autofocus with the d40

so its up to you i guess, do you want to focus all the time?

hey
i even have a quick pic i took with it still on my clipboard, so il paste it in here.

 

[Wilson1990]

I don't think i'd mind it, but i'd prefer to hear what other people (who have had experiance using MF only lenses) have to say about the idea.

I don't want to get it and have it be a pain in the arse, y'know?

 

[azruial]

I don't know anything about Nikon lenses, but switch the lens you currently use to manual focus and shoot for a week. That's the best way to find out if you will personally find mf annoying, right?

 

[ANDS!]

Some will say "In my day all we had was autofocus" - well they also had to use rotary phones and actually remember phone numbers instead of having it autosaved on a computer chip - doesn't mean it was better.

I would go around and try shooting using manual focus only, and see how you like the results and if it is something that indeed will not be a pain to you.

But that lens is fine - never had to shoot anything using manual focus with it though, so what the heck do I know.

 

[Happy Hour]

I have a 50mm f2.8 and I love it! but I have tried it in manual focus,because it takes forever for it to do it in auto, in my opinion(a complete pain in the rear!!) But then again i'm very lazy, so take that in consideration.

 

[Mav]

The 50mm f/1.8D is a nice starter lens for primes and portraits, but it actually doesn't focus very closely at all. To use it as a close-up lens you'd need to get a close-up filter, or an extension tube (Kenko 12mm). The 35mm f/2 gets much closer, but is a little short for portrait length, and also costs 3 times more. As far as manual focusing, you can get pretty decent results to about f/2.8, but at larger apertures than that it'll be pretty hit and miss because the focusing screen won't show the difference. You can get aftermarket focusing screens that will help a ton like Katz Eye, which has one for the D40.

Manually focusing isn't a big deal as long as you're shooting stationary targets, but for people and other things that move where you'd be using continuous focus mode with an AF lens and tracking it, it'll be much more difficult trying to manually focus that.