I’m in love. Shot wide open, this lens renders out of focus areas beautifully. I don’t mean the bokeh. I mean simply that it is a pleasure to use a fast lens that is sharp at open aperture and which therefore is able to separate subject from background so well.
The fact is that I had forgotten what a pleasure a fast prime lens is. I have a 12-24mm which has a maximum aperture of f4, a 60mm AF-S macro f2.8, a 100mm which has a maximum aperture of f2 and a 50mm f1.8. But none of them has just the spread of cover that I was looking for.
When Nikon brought out the 50mm f1.4 AF-S lens a few months ago I thought about it and decided that while the aperture was great, the weight and the focal length were not what I was looking for.
This 35mm lens is not for the D200, which is now wedded to a long lens. It is for the D60. I was looking for a package that was lightweight, a lens that didn’t stick out too far, a fast maximum aperture, and high-quality optics.
And of course it had to be an AF-S lens to drive the focus because the D60 doesn’t have a drive in the body.
As I said, I’m in love. The optics are great and the package is small. It focuses quickly and reliably and it weighs nothing.
I’ll post some shots over the next week of so, but for the moment, here is the package from the side and front. [I took the shots with the Fuji F100fd.]
