Editorial Review:Product Description:35mm D-Series Wideangle lens for Nikon cameras
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
-
Consumer build with great optics
I purchased this excellent optic to fill the need for a fast lens that was less expensive than the great 17-55. The 35 f2 fits the bill superbly. The build is good, but not up to pro standards, the the optical performance is. This is a very sharp, lightweight lens with a very fast F2 maximum aperture.
The only thing is that you have to zoom with your feet a few steps forward or backward in most instances to equal a much more expensive zoom. For that trade-off, you get a slightly sharper, faster, lighter solution. Great for travel. Leave it on most of the time.
This lens focuses very close for a non macro allowing stunning flower shots with beautiful bokeh. I also use it along with my 85 f1.4 for portrait shots. You have to get really close, but that's a special perspective. It has a wonderful color rendition as well as being very contrasty. I would put it slightly less than the 85 f1.4, but it's a third the price.
The only downside is that it is an AFD lens and won't autofocus with the D40, D40x, or D60, but is extremely fast focusing on a D80 or D300. One upside is that if you decide to move to FX (full frame) digital photography, this lens will work nicely.
In summary, the Nikon 35 f2 is a real bargain, especially for those of us who prefer the quality of top notch prime lenses.
Rating: -
Definitely a 5-Star Lens!
Light, fast, sharp, and as far as I'm concerned the perfect focal length.
I started out using 50mm primes, but quickly got tired of how tight they were indoors. All my shots were becoming head/shoulder shots, and forget about trying to get two or three people in the shot without them all being a posed "everyone squeeze together now" shot. That gets real old, real fast.
Let me emphasize:
This lens has a much better field of view at normal shooting distances (the distance you normally stand from your subject).
That is often overlooked, but trust me, backing up 15 feet in a crowd or a house to get your shot is tedious at best and often impossible. It is typically easier to move in towards your subject a little (or crop the photo later) than it is to keep backing up, especially while looking into the viewfinder. I realize it's not totally fair to rate other equally sharp, quality lenses differently, based solely on their focal length, but it is my opinion that this lens (with it's roughly 52mm equivalent focal length) is by far the most useful in the greatest number of situations.
I also used to be fixated on huge apertures, but have since realized that most real world shooting is not done below f/2 anyway. This lens is sharp as anything out there and is great in low light. Yes, I know f/2 isn't nearly as good in super low light as other lenses out there (I know because I have a 50mm f/1.2), but it is good enough for most shooting, and below f/2 the depth of field becomes tricky anyway, and again, not as useful.
Lastly, some people don't like the plasticy feel of new lenses, but I love them. They are so much lighter and silky smooth. I've seen enough heavy, gummy, brassed-up, old, metal lenses in my time to know there's nothing magical about all-metal builds either. So to me it's just another modern improvement that works like a charm.
Most that I've seen tend to resell online for 90%+ of full retail value, so even if you somehow didn't like it, your risk in trying and buying is super low.
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Rating: -
Excellent fast prime lens for Nikon cameras
This is a D lens, made for non-digital cameras, but it works fine on digital ones too. Only, when you use it on a digital model it's not really a wide angle lens, but more like a standard length lens, the equivalent of 50mm on a film SLR. It's a fast lens and has good crisp clarity. Another great feature of the lens is its minimum focus distance, about 11 inches. I've made some very good shots using small apertures to produce very clear focus on the subject in the foreground, and blur the background. The lens is light, and automatic focuses very quickly.
Rating: -
Excellent lens
The lens produces very nice pictures. The focus is very fast with a little noise (could be ignored). The body quality is much better than 50mm/1.8, similar to 50mm/1.4. It stays on my D80 almost all the time.
Rating: -
Great lens - deserves more than 3.5 stars
I typically don't bother writing reviews, but in this case I decided to since one reviewer felt compelled to "review" this lens and unfairly give it 1 star. The lens performs exactly as advertised, pictures are very sharp with good contrast. Focusing is a bit loud but I really don't care about that. Definitely soft at 2.0, but sharpness significantly increases as you stop down. I bought the Nikkor 50mm 1.8 lens at the same time and I am currently testing both out to see which one I will keep. If it weren't for the fact that the 50mm is just too much zoom I would say it's a keeper hands down, but the 35mm is perfect for indoor and family shots. Amazon really needs to screen some of the reviews a bit better than they do. With 8 reviews, 7 of which give it 4-5 stars and 1 review gives it 1 star, that really throws off it's grade. Especially when the reviewer makes it so abundantly clear that they don't know what they are talking about. Anybody who has been in the dSLR world for any amount of time at all knows that there is a crop factor involved, as well as the fact that this lens isn't even compatible with the d40 (in the sense that it won't auto-focus). The lens performs great, but you have to do your homework before you buy something like this. It would be like me reviewing a roll of film and giving it one star becasue it doesn't work with my D200.