Could you tell that some of us are very excited about the new macro photography rig? We have been fiddling, experimenting, and talking about it all week. The only piece of the setup we have not gone on and on about is the Nikkor 50mm f1.8 autofocus lens. So to wrap up the week, we will have a brief discussion of that lens. I promise we'll go on to something new next week :-)
We purchased this lens for macro use, but this 50mm lens is a great lens for a lot of reasons. It is lightweight (5 oz), very small (2.6"D / 52mm filter), and very sharp. It is also amazingly inexpensive. The lens has six elements, a seven-blade diaphram, and can focus down to about 18". Nikon has a faster version
of this lens, but it is about four times as expensive. If money was no object, we might still buy that one because it might actually be sharper based on various reports (Tan, Rasmussen, Rockwell), on the Web.
This Nikkor 50mm f1.8 does NOT have an internal auto focusing mechanism so it will not auto-focus when attached to a D40, but it will with our D90. Of course, this is not an issue when we use it for macro photography as all of the images will be manually focused.
The 50mm lens is pretty amazing when coupled with the D90. These sample images were taken around the office in a quick "point-n-shoot" fashion. We will have to spend a little more time with it to see what it REALLY can do...once we can get over this macro-photography obsession. [Permalink] - 50mm Nikkor Lens
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