I broke down today and spent a hundred bucks on a new 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor lens for my D-70. The 18-70mm zoom lens is great, but the limitations associated with a maximum aperture of f/3.5 at 18mm have been apparent since that first morning I took my new camera out for a spin. I like low light too much to pass on this new lens.
A feature that’s worth mentioning is that the 50mm does have aperture marks for depth of field. The 18-70mm that comes with the Nikon D-70 kit doesn’t have those marks. I have no way to measure the limits of my depth of field and there’s no accurate gauge the hyper-focal focus on that lens! (Please tell me if I’m wrong about this.)
One more thing that’s worth mentioning is that this new lens is missing those “DX” letters in it’s name, so it’s not really acting like a 50mm lens. The conversion factor for film lenses to digital on the D-70 is x1.5, so this 50mm is actually more like a 75mm lens. Since this lens will work on either a Nikon film or digital camera–without some weird vignette, I should add–I’m really not too worried.
Anyway, I’ve only played with this new lens a bit today, shooting a little depth of field experiment that’s posted below. Yeah, it’s pretty lame, but if you don’t know exactly what I’ve been talking about then those pictures should give you the general idea about the “depth of feild” stuff.
