Nikkor 28mm f/3.5 (pre-ai)

Why would you buy an manual focus lens within the range of your kit lens in the first place, and why on earth would you want to have one with an aperture that your kit lens is able to give you as well? First of all, I like primes, I like the way you always get the same kind of perspective. When you have a zoom, the perspective changes with every time you use another focal length. Primes give you a better idea how things will look like before you look through the viewfinder because the way they render what they see does not change. This makes you work faster, or at least when you’re used to using primes.

But for me the most important reason to have this lens is that it has hyper focal markings on its body. I like to use this lens for landscapes, and the hyperfocus markings are very useful. The reason I find the ability to use hyperfocus distances so important is that by closing your lens too far down diffraction occurs. Diffraction causes your lens to be less sharp than at the middle apertures, and because of that it is useful to use hyperfocus distances.

Handling the lens

The focus is very light on this lens, you need little pressure to turn the ring. But it is not so light you “overshoot”, you can focus this lens very precise. Besides the perfect focus mechanism this lens is fairly wide, even on DX sensors, this means your DoF is larger than with telephoto lenses. Because of that you maintain focus much longer, making it even easier to focus this lens.

Another reason I love this lens for my landscape shots is that the front element does not turn when you focus. It only extends a bit, but that doesn’t matter. This allows you to mount filters on this lens without the focus affecting it. Imagine using a polarizer on a lens which front element turns when you focus, almost impossible to use. With this lens it is much easier to use a polarizer, or a graduated neutral density filter.

Besides that there is little to mention about the lens, it is quite small and light. It makes the ideal travel companion on a DX camera. This lens decreases the size of your DSLR significantly compared to a zoom lens, because this lens is so short it takes up less space.

Results

The results are just amazing. This lens isn’t very fast, nor is it very wide. Nikon didn’t need  to make compromises to build this lens, resulting in a very good lens. Pointed at the sun it is hard to get a flare, and sharpness is already very good wide open. There is little CA. It is sad, but there’s just nothing more to say about the results, except that it is just a very good lens.

Conclusion

As I said, this is a very good lens. You will get great results from this lens, even wide open. In that perspective it is sad that its focal length falls within the reach of the kit lens. This lens isn’t significantly faster than your average 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6. However I am convinced that this lens was able to maintain its value, especially because of the hyper focus markings. These are really huge to me, and I prefer this lens over my kit lens because of that, and because its front element does not rotate during focusing.

Because this lens isn’t exceptionally fast or wide this lens can be found for little money, which is another great quality.

(I don't like to put up full resolution files, if you're interested in this lens you can leave a comment / sent an email for larger files)

rome with a 28 part 2, the vatican

When I went to the vatican it was a bright sunny day. I figured that the white buildings of the vatican and that blue sky would make a good photograph, especially if i used a polarizer. However there were so many people, and I could not get up to look over the square that i was not able to make a photograph of the St. Peter cathedral that i liked. However i did take a detail. This photograph is taken with the polarizer turned in such a way that it has the maximum effect because i was going for a contrasty, well saturated photograph.

From the top of the St. Peter on the other hand the people on the square were so small that they didn't matter at all. But the people on top of the St. Peter where another story. I felt like i was in a busy subwaystation fighting for a place in the subway. It was ridiculous that they allowed so much people there, I would have been happier with a longer line and less people on the St. Peter than the other way around. To get the photo i wanted from the wonderful view I just sprayed and prayed. Prayed for no people in the photographs, prayed for a good composition. In the end I got a few lucky hits, but wow I'm never going up there again.

The people downstairs were much nicer, near the exit of the St. Peter I found this man. I sat down on the other side of the doorway so I could take a photograph of him. He noticed me taking a first photograph of him (he just closed his eyes, my luck again), laughed and took this pose.

Well these were the highlights of Rome, I took around 360 photographs but I have process them yet. The thing I learned in Rome was to always take a prime. I saved so much time with it. I didn't have to worry about focal lengts or crops because when you are used to a certain focal length you get a feel for what will be in the photograph. The results are sharper as well, compared to the photographs i took with the 18-55 lens during the busride I am able to crop more than with the 18-55. 

Well next time I will put on something useful. A review of my lenses for instance, or how to focus manual in lots of situations. But during my visit to Rome i fel like writing down how much easier it is to take photographs with a prime lens, even though it sounds weird. 

happy newyear everyone

rome with a 28 part 1

Between 26 and 30 december I went to Rome with my family. I had a fantastic time, and Rome truly is a magnificent city. The colleseum for instance dates from the time when Christians were outlaws, and on the other side of the city there's the Vatican. The contrast couldn't have been larger. 

Needless to say, i took my camera with me. This is where the trouble started, having more than one lens. I could take every  lens i own, but this would not have been a wise thing to do. You have to consider that everything you take you will have to carry. I decided that i had to limit myself only to take 2 lenses. 

I took the 18-55 kitlens because i probably would take a bus-tour through the city and than i would need the versatility of a wide to normal zoomlens. 

And i took my 28mm f/3.5 because i really like this lens. It is a slightly wide normal lens on the DX format and probably would do a good job in the crowded streets of Rome. It turned out that this lens almost didn't get off my camera.

Our hotel was close to the colloseum, and we went there on the day we arrived. Even though it was an overcast day i was able to shoot at f/11. Using hyperfocus and F/11 gave me a large depth of field. For the family shots of my brother and my mother i didn't have to worry about focussing at all. However the contrast between the sky and the buildings and the ground was too large for my camera. I had to use a graduated neutral density filter. This filter, and a polarizer filter are always in my camera bag. They are light and during almost every shoot outside they can come in handy. 

The GND filter caused a new problem, the colloseum was way higher than the horizon. I just turned the filter a bit, that the line wasn't in line with the horizon anymore, but with the line which needed to be darkened. I payed very close attention to my composition, because the part beside the colloseum would be darkened. So it should not contain any information, or at least something important. 

The reason i took such pictures, not showing the whole structure, was that everyone knows the colloseum. We all have seen beautiful photographs of it. And that in order to show the whole colloseum you also need to include background. This background was crowded with tourists, busses, and other traffic. I decided to take only close crops of it to get better, less touristic shots.

As you can see in the photographs above the GND wasn't straight but tilted, you can see little lighter areas.I do not really mind this as long as it is not too obvious. It produces a slight halo effect, increasing the contrast between the building and the sky, without blowing out the sky.

However you can make mistakes really easy. The most  important thing, according to me, is that it looks true. One thing you should pay attention to is that you do not darken the buildings. With the photo below I messed up. But due to the darker part of the colloseum at the top it isn't really disturbing, even with this flaw i like this photograph. I particulary like the colours, how the blue makes a great contrast with the colours from the buildings. And that the colours from the colloseum kind of come back in the houses in the background.

In the evening i got back to the colloseum. This is something i certainly recommend when you visit a city, cityscapes look very different in artificial lighting. And most of the times there has been done some thinking about how to light important buildings. I found a small square which was a bit higher than the street. The street caught my attention when i was in the daylight at the colloseum because it made a turn just before it.
The traffic was fairly unpredictable because there were traffic lights just behind me. So i closed my aperture down to f/16 to get a shutter speed of 30 seconds. This way it wouldn't show up in the picture if there weren't as many cars as I hoped for. This approach did quite a good job, but if you look closer there's a traffic light in the middle of the picture as well. It turned out that I had to do 6 exposures before i got the picture i was going for.