Nikon 35mm f/1.8G AF-S DX Lens for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras
- Engineered for Nikon DX-format digital SLRs – Optical formula optimized for use with Nikon DX-format digital SLRs.
- Aspherical lens element minimizes coma and other types of lens aberrations, further improving image integrity
- Nikon Super Integrated Coating (SIC) enhances light transmission efficiency and offers superior color consistency and reduced flare
- The exclusive Nikon Silent Wave Motor (SWM) enables fast, accurate and quiet autofocus
- Close focusing to one foot for creative perspectives and versatility
The AF-S DX Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G optical design allows a different look and feel to images taken with zoom lenses, and its dimensions are ideal for discrete snapshots and landscape shooting with a picture angle that approximates that of the human eye. With its rounded seven-blade diaphragm opening, out-of-focus elements appear more natural. When mounted on a DX-format SLR, the picture angle is the 35mm equivalent focal length of 50mm.
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Great for low light, great focal length for DX, and autofocus will also work with D40, D40x, D60, and D5000 cameras,
This Nikon 35mm f/1.8G AF-S DX lens produces sharp pictures and great color and contrast. It is also perfect for portrait and other general purposes (semi-macro etc). This lens also produces nice bokeh. The picture quality and bokeh quality are comparable with the other Nikon prime lenses (50mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.4, 50mm f/1.4 AF-S etc) lens which are famous for being sharp. Overall, this is a very versatile lens. On a non full frame DSLR (such as D40, D40x, D60, D5000, D80, D90, D200, D300 etc), this 35mm focal length is equivalent to about 50mm which is considered a normal lens (normal as to being close to a person eye viewing angle perspective).
Many of us, including those who already own the 50mm prime, have been waiting for this lens (prime lens that has wider angle than the 50mm) for a long time, especially for non full frame DSLR owners that usually have about 1.5x magnification due to the smaller sensor size. Those 50mm lens on a non full frame DSLR is equivalent to 75mm which is often too much zoom for many situation. For example in a room where you can’t keep backing up to compose your photos, or when taking picture of a group of people where you will need to move back a lot with the 50mm lens. This 35mm lens will solve that problem to some extent as this is a lot wider lens than the 50mm prime lenses. Having said that the 50mm prime lens is still a great lens. If you don’t own any of the earlier version of the 50mm lens and wondering if you should get this 35mm or the 50mm, then I would recommend you to get this lens over 50mm, unless you know for sure that you need more zoom than the 35mm for your purpose, then you can go and buy the 50mm or 85mm (both available on f/1.4 or f/1.8).
This lens (DX lens) is not designed for a full frame camera (FX or Film). There will be light fall-off which is quite significant. If you have a full frame DSLR, you might want to get the 50mm f/1.4 AF-S, or the older 35mm f/2 AF-D lens instead.
Being a prime lens (this 35mm lens), you will need to move your feet a lot to compose your picture.
While this lens produces very sharp images at f/1.8, the corner show lower contrast. Sharpness and contrast increases further as you stop down to f/2, f/2.8 and f/4. Sharpness increases slowly after f/2.8 (i.e. at f/2.8 seems to be the optimal, without sacrificing too much speed)
The big plus with this lens over the older 35mm lens is the AF-S feature which is auto focus system that is internal to the lens, very fast and very silent. This lens will please a lot of people who currently own D40, D40x, D60, and D5000, as they now can benefit from the autofocus.
Another big win is the manual override on autofocus mode (M/A mode), which will allow us to change the focus without having to change the mode to manual mode (this is pretty standard to most Nikon newer lenses but it’s quite new for Nikon prime lens series)
This lens doens’t have image stabilization (VR), but that is kind of expected as Nikon also doesn’t include VR on their new 50mm f/1.4 AF-S lens. It would be nice to have VR (for longer exposure handheld operation, and for people with less stable photography technique) but it will probably increase the size, weight and cost of this lens.
If you are wondering whether you should get a fast lens or a lens with VR (Vibration Reduction), here’s my take: In overall, VR does help a lot (as it will reduce camera shake) and will produce better/sharper picture than equivalent lens without VR (especially if the object is static). If the object is moving fast (sports/action) then VR feature alone might not help (depending on how fast the object is moving and how much light is available), and a fast lens often end up being a far better solution, even without VR feature as it will allow much faster shutter speed to freeze motion. Using tripod (and a remote) will substitute for the need of VR feature. In general I would recommend getting a fast lens with VR feature (and usually it is expensive) such as the 70-200 f/2.8 VR, but if one can only get for one or the other, then find out what do you want to use the lens for and then use the guideline mentioned here.
If you are wondering whether you will get the benefit of buying f/1.4 lens over a f/1.8 lens, just remember that the f/1.4 lens is about 60% faster than f/1.8 at its widest aperture setting. With this information, you can decide if the additional speed will justify the additional cost. The bokeh is nicer as well in f/1.4 lens but I think speed is usually the main factor in deciding whether to get the more expensive f/1.4 lens.
Here are the summary of pros and cons for this Nikon 35mm f/1.8G AF-S lens:
Pros:
1. AF-S AF-S AF-S (very fast focus, internal focus, and very silent)
2. M/A mode (manual focus override available on autofocus mode)
3. Very fast lens (f/1.8)
4…
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|Unassuming humble little jewel of a lens,
Nikon has absolutely nailed it with this lens. A modest sum gets you exactly what you need in a lens, nothing you don’t, and it works beautifully. It is relatively feature-rich at its price: cheap lenses, even from Nikon, often lack important features – but not here. Unlike other recent DX bargains this lens has Nikon’s M/A focus setting, which allows automatic focus with instant manual over-ride. This is a simple and intuitive method of combining the ease and accuracy of AF with sometimes-necessary manual control, and Nikon has done users of this lens a great favor by including it, despite the low price. It also features, less importantly, a proper metal mount and a gasket to keep dust ingress from occurring through the camera/lens interface. A couple of items do remain absent: there is no focus distance scale, and as a consequence there is no depth-of-field scale, an unfortunate omission that is nevertheless justified at the price point. This is a bargain lens, a no-brainer for any photographer aspiring beyond the point-and-shoot level, and the lack of distance and depth scales are a reasonable trade-off.
What is clear to me in using this lens is that Nikon has put its money in exactly the right places to make this lens a star despite its price. There may be nitpicks here and there, but the optics, the coatings, the engineering, and perhaps most importantly the quality of the focusing system, are exactly what they need to be to allow this lens to make photographs that are the equal of those made by professional zooms costing in the thousands.
The important thing to keep in mind with this lens is that it is a relatively fast prime lens, and the most important quality of a fast prime is its ability to take photographs using a large aperture: without this ability there are any number of excellent consumer and professional zooms that are capable of doing the same job. Its essential distinguishing quality, then, is its ability to make images at apertures wider than f/2.8 or so, and at such large apertures there are two hurdles that a lens must overcome. The first is simply a matter of optics: most lenses, historically at least, have been made from an assemblage of spherically-ground lens elements. Spherical elements do a good job of approximating the perfect shape for a lens at smaller apertures and are used because they can be manufactured inexpensively – but at larger apertures, their spherical nature varies optically from perfection, leading to something called spherical aberration. This results in a lack of acuity, and sharpness, in the resulting image. The 35/1.8 uses an aspherical element (actually a hybrid aspherical for what it’s worth) to correct this imperfection. The result, in this well-engineered example, is a lens that performs nearly as well at a wide-open f/1.8 aperture as at an optimal f/5.6 or f/8 aperture.
The other important hurdle in performance for a modern fast lens is the quality of the focusing system. This is more complicated than simply the lens itself, as it relies on electronics in both the lens and the camera body. Nevertheless the more I use Nikon’s AF-S lenses – and have the opportunity to compare them with older and third-party technology – the more I am impressed by their performance. The difficulty is that at f/1.8, even with a “normal” (35mm for DX) lens, the depth of field is very narrow. The focusing system needs to be able to find focus within a very small margin of error, and just as importantly it needs to be able to alter focus in very small increments in response to minor changes in the position of the camera or subject. The requirement for accuracy is stringent enough that earlier generations of AF lenses, those which relied on motors in the camera body, tended to be somewhat clumsy in their ability to consistently maintain perfect focus. They would “hunt,” requiring several back-and-forth adjustments to find perfect focus, and they would often either fail to respond or lose focus altogether when small adjustments were needed. Nikon’s AF-S lenses comprise a significant technical advance in that they largely eliminate these problems. The AF-S motors, in combination with the in-camera focusing logic of Nikon’s contemporary bodies, are able to make the small adjustments necessary to find and maintain focus even within small depths of field. They rarely hunt, they are typically very accurate, and the 35/1.8 seems to be as good as the best of them. This is important, because it allows the 35/1.8 get excellent, perfectly focused pictures while other lenses are trying to figure themselves out or are shooting pictures an inch or fractions of an inch out of perfection, often enough to ruin the shot.
These are the most important things to keep in mind, for most photographers, when looking for a fast “normal” lens. Everything else should be considered as well, but when it comes to the ability to…
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|For $199 is it just hype?,
Being a self proclaimed prosumer I’m not exactly a pro, but I am still demanding when it comes to camera hardware (and software for that matter). I mention this because it puts this review in the proper context.
On to the lens…
First off, when a $199 lens comes around from Nikon I have two thoughts, “Right on!” and “Seems pretty cheap for Nikon”. I was skeptical but for $199 and all the great reviews why not give it a shot? Well, I did.
Amazon taunted me, B&H teased me, and my local camera shops didn’t exactly sooth my fear that it would be months before I could get my hand on one. Putting a pre-order in with all the above mentioned establishments my local store came through first (and for the same 199 dollar price tag).
I get it home, take it out of the box and the first thing that comes to mind is how much heavier it is than some of the kit lenses I have picked up. Yes it’s plastic, but the thing has a different level of quality from the other Nikon budget/consumer lenses. You can peruse the other reviews on Amazon and other websites for more specifics but the point is there is a noticeable difference.
I then put the thing on my camera (made sure to put on a filter first) and start snapping away, outside, inside, and everywhere in between. The pictures are fantastic, in low light in particular. The bokeh isn’t top notch but for anyone but a pro this likely will be worth the tradeoff being the 199 price tag is a huge selling point here. And don’t get me wrong, the bokeh isn’t terrible, I’ve just seen better with more (much more) expensive lenses.
So is it hype? Can a Nikon lens selling at $199 be good enough for the more demanding consumers out there? You betcha, this thing is probably the best and smartest purchase I’ve made in the last five years. I have three other lenses and I can say without any hesitation the 35mm F/1.8 AF-S will be on my camera 90% of the time – if not more – from here on out.
In closing, if you love photography but don’t have the means to drop hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on nicer lenses, get annoyed at the fact that low light photography with the kit lens just doesn’t cut it, and want to expand, this is THE lens to get.
I promise you, you will not be disappointed.
Good luck!
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