First Impressions: AF-S DX Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G

This superb little lens was so popular this holiday season, that it sold out completely and was no where to be found. So you can imagine my amazement when I found one quite by accident at my local Best Buy store.

Every Nikon user should own this lens. Back in the day, an SLR came bundled with a 50mm “normal” lens, usually an f/1.8.  If you could swing it, you’d buy just the body with the 1.4. Nowadays, it’s in fashion to buy the kit, with an inexpensively made but optically fine standard zoom.

This lens gives you the best combination of speed and quality at an unbelievable price. Value wise, some may see it as a mixed bag; being a G series lens, you give up the aperture ring. But what you gain is an essentially silent focus motor, instant manual focus override, a reversible bayonet hood, and a storage pouch. You can’t use the aperture ring on modern cameras anyway, so it’s the one redundancy that’s expendable. The cost savings go into the optics, and the lower price. And Nikon knows they’re going to be selling a lot of these, so their margin is razor thin and thus the value high.

The first thing I did was mount it on the N80, not the D90. Why? I wanted to learn the truth about what I’ve been reading; that it works on an FX/35mm camera.

Well let’s add to the value of this lens by saying that it could definitely be used on a 35mm/FX camera, with some minor limitations. It does not have the hellacious vignetting of many other DX lenses. What it does have is what I would describe as a “lomographic dark corner effect”. At wide apertures (at which this lens is sharpest by the way) it is practically nonexistent. But above about f/5.6 you may actually see a hard edge in the corner. At least all of this is what the viewfinder tells me, which shows 92% of the image. My first roll of film will tell me more.

So, for fans of lomography such as I, a 35mm lens with dark corners on a film camera seems to be a rather good bonus. I might be able to do without that Holga 135BC (Black Corner) after all.

Now, onto the D90.

With this lens, I finally feel grounded. Like the D90 is complete. It’s the lens I feel I can comfortably keep on the camera at all times, ready for anything.

It’s like a blank canvas, a starting point. It makes me want to explore all thing things I can do with this lens, without being locked down by any one advantage. It’s the universal lens. Telephoto? Get closer. Wide angle? Step back. Closeup? Focus in. Macro? Add an extension tube. Infrared? Add a filter.

Manual focus is not as silky as the AF 20mm f/2.8D, but the ring is easy to operate. It’s light, but not as small as it looks in pictures; It’s almost identical to the 20mm, a little wider in diameter, and not as tapered. It looks robust on the camera.

Folks with 35mm in their zoom range may see this lens as redundant. Not so. This lens is designed to do what those lenses can’t; capture images in existing light. And I can’t wait to see what I’ve been missing with the AF-S 16-85mm zoom.