I shot some artificial trees at the mall with my 24mm 1.4g wide open. I’ve gotta say, I really love the effect.
2 Weeks with the Nikon 35mm 1.4g
So I purchased a used Nikon 35mm 1.4g 2 weeks ago and I wanted to give an update on my impressions. Before I share my opinion, I want to note that I’m not a professional photographer… it’s just a hobby that I enjoy.
So for starters, I noticed that the 35mm 1.4g is pretty soft when shot wide open (at F1.4). There’s also a fair bit of vignetting, but I actually kind of like the effect.
However, when you shoot wide open, its ability to isolate a subject is phenomenal. The strength of the 35mm is its versatility. There is certainly some compromise, but the convenience of having one single lens on the body is what makes it brilliant.
And having the extra low light ability just makes things so much more interesting for night time. Things look incredible with available lighting, and the best part is that you can do it hand held. The difference between f1.4 and f2.0 is a full stop (2x more light), and the difference between f1.4 and f2.8 is (4x more light). That’s a tremendous delta.
The most important thing I find myself doing is shooting more pictures of people. That’s the difference I’ve been looking for versus my 24mm.
The 35mm is great for journalism style photos. I love how it shows some of the environment to give you a hint of what’s happening around a subject.
The 35mm can also be used for some landscapes/cityscapes. This was stitched from 5 photos shot vertically to create a similar focal length to a ultra wide angle lens. There is a little distortion, but most people probably won’t see it. (Now that I’ve pointed it out, I’m sure you’ll notice it. Heh)
And the bokeh is incredible. If you look really carefully, there’s a slight bit of onioning when you zoom in 100%, but you really have to pixel peep to notice.
So after using the 35mm 1.4g for a week, I think I’m going to keep it. I got it for a great deal, so I’m feeling pretty lucky right now.
What do you guys think of the the 35mm?
Bay Bridge at Night
It looks like the engineers were testing out the new lights on the bay bridge. I took the opportunity to quickly snap some photos.
I shot these out of the window of my apartment, semi-handheld. I rested the camera on the ledge of the window and then snapped about 10 photos. I stacked the images and then applied a median blend on all of them to reduce the noise. If I had a tripod, I would have done a long exposure.
Out of Focus
I was walking to pick up some dinner tonight.
I think there could be some interesting abstractions of the things around us, especially at night.
I’m not sure exactly where this will lead to, but I there are some interesting things will happen once I get the hang of it.
BMW Motorcycle
I saw this beauty on my way home tonight. Look at all those lovely details.
I wish I could have shot this during the day. It was pretty dark, so I had to snap the photo with the aperture wide open.
All you motorcycle nuts: Is this a good bike? Looks expensive.
SF Colors at Night
After meeting up with Sol this evening, I walked home and snapped some pictures.
I noticed some lovely colors as I strolled back. There’s no fancy composition… just wanted to capture some colors.
Yep, you guessed it… this one is from a gentlemans club.
I set the lens to manual and shot this one. I love how all the lights in the background have turned into little bokeh balls. I’m really digging the abstraction. I think I’m going to start shooting more stuff out of focus.