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Post by kiev4a on May 12, 2007 15:18:29 GMT -5
Today my 50mm f1.8 AF D Nikkor arrived. Really sharp and on the D100 it's like having an70 mm 1.8--great for portraits.
The 1.8 is an interesting story. Three years ago you could pick up a used one for fifty bucks. Then the digital crowd discovered what a great lens it was. Now you see very few go for less than $100. In fact I've seen used ones go for more than the retail pprice of a new one (shows how savy some of the DSLR newbys are).
I had one a couple of years ago and three it in with the F100 I was selling. Now I had to go back and get another (fror quite a bit more than I paid for the last one. Story of my life with cameras and firearms (I finally quit trading guns).
Wayne
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Post by nikonbob on May 13, 2007 5:54:46 GMT -5
I am glad to see that the Nikkor 50/1.8 is finally getting the respect it deserves. Mine was great except that it suffered from oil on the blades. Good to know that someone else trades like I do.
Bob
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Post by kiev4a on May 13, 2007 11:10:01 GMT -5
Yep. Didid the same thing with a 50mm f2 ai Nikkor. Sold one, then turned around a turned later and got another.
The 50mm f1.8 AFD is a super lens and isn't as much of a chunk to carry around as the f 1.4. Nefer have cared that much for any of the Nikkor F1.4s. Always seemed like a lot of extra weight and bulk for a little extra speed.
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Post by nikonbob on May 13, 2007 14:46:03 GMT -5
I still have a couple of manual ais 50/1.8's and they make a very compact outfit when coupled with an FM/FE type camera. Who needs a pancake lens with one of these? The ai 50/2 is not as compact but what a cracker of a lens. I used it to take some aerials from a ultralight years back and the detail blew me away.
Bob
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jmi
Senior Member
Posts: 60
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Post by jmi on May 13, 2007 16:16:07 GMT -5
I have to agree, my 50/1.8 AI is my most used (and of course cheapest) Nikon lens by a very large margin. I often carry just the 50 with a 12mm extension tube in a pocket - great for the sort of close shooting I like to do a lot of.
As Bob says, these make a great combo with the FM2n in my case. I always use lens hoods (waaay to clumsy with fingers and front elements otherwise - plus no nasty fiddly lens caps required) so it's not quite a pancake, but the portability of this setup takes some beating. It's even easier to carry than the Leica.
Ron - I too wonder about those reviews claiming the 1.8 is better than the 1.4. My suspicion has always been that it's splitting hairs to tell the difference between the two, except for distortion - as I understand it the 1.4 has barrel distortion (by necessity in the fast lens design AFAIK). It follows that the reviewers were probably testing by shooting pictures of brick walls or something!
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