New Lens

Last week a friend surprised me with a gift in the mail. Among the items in the care package was a Nikkor 35mm F1.8 lens.

Oh. My. God. How did I ever live without this lens?

At the risk of sounding like a bigger geek than I am, a faster lens means that I’m able to take sharper indoor pictures in low natural light. Where I live, it sometimes feels like there are more cloudy days than sunny ones. I can’t remember the last time we had a streak of sunny days.

So when there isn’t enough light, the camera’s shutter has to open long enough to capture the image. You don’t want the shutter to be open too long because, if you’re holding the camera by hand as I do, your pictures can come out blurry.

There are some solutions. A flash is the easiest solution but some pictures don’t turn out well with flash. Food never looks good under its harsh light. You could bump up the ISO but then your pictures will look grainy. A tripod is a great solution. Unfortunately it’s not always ideal because it gets cumbersome and isn’t always practical.

And that’s why I absolutely love my new lens. At F1.8, it has a larger aperture (hole) than my F3.5-F5.6. That means I’m able to get more light at a faster shutter speed. Fewer blurry pictures! Plus since it’s a prime lens, as opposed to zoom, there are fewer moving parts. This should mean that the pictures will be sharper.

Here are a few of my favorites I’ve taken so far:

It was getting pretty dark outside but I love how the lens buys me that extra time to take pictures.

A faster lens also means I can take faster and better pictures of Junior, especially since he tends to squirm around alot.

Compared to the kit lens in this picture. Perhaps Mr. Squirrel would have been sharper if I had the new lens.

I love the richness of the colors in this one but don’t know if it’s really due to the lens or not. I should do a comparison next time.

I like how the 35mm forces me to think about composition.For example there are a few things I’m not quite sure about in this picture, like if I should’ve taken it with the full picture frame or how the bookshelf ledge cuts off the bottom left corner.

I love bokeh (the aesthetic blur in pictures) but I’m finding that this lens is bo-crazy. When your shutter is open as wide at F1.8, I tend to get alot of bokeh. A little can go a long way so I’m learning how to manage the fast shutter speed with the right amount of bokeh.

btw I was chopping bamboo to make sticky rice. Yum!

All in all, I loooooove this new lens. Thank you Nikon Fairy!

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~ by bonnielu on September 29, 2011.