Critter wrote:Thanks for the comments - she is actually sick at the moment with a gastro bug so these shots were the first time in a few days that she had been outside to play!
Dave, the thing that I am enjoying most about the lens is how much easier it is to seperate the subject from the background and the way you can control the depth of field. Coming from a coolpix 5700, that is really rocking my boat. Its low light capability is very useful too.
The biggest problem that I have had with it is the focal length. I am used to being very close to my subjects. If it was a little wider, I would get more keepers, and I think that my next lens will be a 35 f/2 or 28 f/2.8 to this end, but in the mean time, I want to get used to moving away more. The lens is often described as being sharper from 2.8 upwards, but at the moment, I am still experimenting.
The D80 is obviously a bulkier camera than the 5700, so the 50mm lens is helping me get used to a larger piece of equipment to shoot with. The 18-70 seems enormous to me still!
With this lens being almost the cheapest lens that Nikon makes, and given the good write ups that it gets, it was an easy choice to get it
Thanks Chris. It's interesting to read that you've found it hard to get used to being so far away, by being limited at 50mm. Those of us with no primes in our arsenal take for granted the zoom lenses (such as the popular 18-70 kit lens), which, with one turn of the wrist gets you closer of further away.
I must admit, I have played around with keeping my 18-70 on 50mm and experimented using it as if it were a prime lens. It did feel kind of strange but with a lens so sharp and great in low light, as the 50 1.8, I'm sure it'd be easy to persist and become at ease with the lens
Look forward to seeing more of your images in the future...