Nikon AF-S DX-NIKKOR 35mm f/1,8G

<p>I have had more than my share of bad luck owning third party lenses. The sample variation is pretty extreme with the Sigma's, Tokina's etc... I tried 2 samples of the 30/1.4 but both had very uneven focus across the frame...both on the left side. I tried the Sigma 10-20 zoom, but the sharpness was mediocre at best. I briefly had a Tokina 17mm to use on my Canon 5D...what a piece of junk.</p>

<p>I don't see that anything significant is gained by paying double the price of the Nikon. The Nikon is pretty robust...not as solid as the Sigma...but not cheesy by any means. I'm sure there are fantastic copies of the Sigma out there, but I haven't seen one.</p>

<p>Dave: Not sure how I can be clearer about this. If you don't care about a particular aspect of a more expensive lens's behavior, then it's great that you don't need to spend the money. If you're not worried about how a lens renders its out of focus areas, then you have the huge advantage of being happier with, say, Nikon's 85/1.8 instead of their much more expensive 85/1.4 (though there's much, much more to the differences between <em>those</em> two lenses than just a bit more speed, right?).<br /><br />As for choosing one brand over another (re: the "off brand" 30/1.4)? Again: Nikon <em>doesn't make such a lens</em>. Regardless, choosing a brand over performance, just out of brand loyalty, seems a little silly. Especially when the only thing you can get from a given brand within a certain range is their lower budget model... but because of the logo, you feel obliged. You may indeed prefer a Nikon lens over another brand, but if you don't actually have a similar lens to compare to, how does that work?<br /><br />Lastly: it isn't just rangefinder-obsessed primadonnas that care how background details are rendered. If you have two lenses to choose from, and one of them produces harsher artifacts than the other, which would you use when looking to feature a foreground subject via shallow depth of field? Do you really not find one of these two examples different than the other? It's obvious that there's a difference, so it just comes down to whether it makes a difference to the photographer.</p><div></div>

<p>If bokeh has to be sacrificed for 1) focus accuracy, 2) in-focus area sharpness, 3) edge sharpness, 4) manual focus that doesn't feel like sandpaper had been used inside the lens to create friction - so be it. There is no question in my mind whether bokeh is worth sacrificing all these other aspects.</p>

<p>and I am staring with two wide open eyes!<br>

thanks Matt</p>

<p>Nikon certainly won't be winning any awards for build quality on some of their more recent lenses. From what I have heard, the Sigma 1.4/50mm smokes the Nikon. To me, on a fast lens, boke is a HUGE part of the appeal of a particular lens. $200 or $400 for a lens is nothing, so go with what produces the best image for you. some manufacturers charge more than that for a lens hood! nikon no longer holds any cache with me. if it were me, I would go with Dave's suggestion, and put a Leica Summilux 1.4/50mm on the front.</p>

<p>I also bought the 35 1.8 DX for my Nikon D80. Firstly, the lens exceeded my expectations in the build quality department. It feels solid, it has<strong> A</strong> <strong>METAL</strong> mount with rubber sealed gasket, it is sharp, good even at f/1.8, it comes with a hood, focuses spot-on and the chromatic aberation is very discreet. However, i am quite dissapointed by it's flare resistance. It is the only minus i can thonk of.<br>

On the other hand, i also considered the sigma since i am a 1.4 fan. To put it simply, that lens is a lottery. In my country, there are reports of soft copies, and numerous lenses that had to be recalibrated on a specific camera in order for the focus to work. Off-course, there re alot of reports praising it. I also own a tamron, so i'm not necessarily a brand freak, but i said no thanks to the sigma. I don't gamble with my money, and the price difference simply made the choise easier.</p>

<p>To me the iron isn't really sharp in either photograph and the background is extremely distracting, again, in both photos. I would use a tripod, stop down to f/2.8 or f/4, and then somehow clear the background of the bright highlights either by introducing something between the foreground and background or by changing camera angle to position them outside of the frame. A third possibility would be to use flash to increase the light on the iron and this way reduce the relative brightness of the background in the image.</p>

<p>Ilkka: Of course one's first stop should always be to make the most of lighting and composition to get what you need/want out of the shot. I fired those two off quickly to make a point. When you do NOT have the luxury of moving yourself, your subject, or the background, it's nice to have a choice of tools that help to render the background in a constructive way. Of <em>course</em> that's a distracting background! That's the whole point. I was deliberately throwing a busy, reflective background a short distance behind a sample subject. <br /><br />Where you really notice this sort of thing is when the harder, ring-like bokeh of the more troubled lens happens to produce those artifacts in sizes that compete with, say, the eyes of your subject. Or the curls in her hair. Or any other thing you don't want diminished by competing background busy-ness. A wiser composition, or the use of polarizers, or as you say - puddling the light just so - may all be far better choices than relying on the lens to help out. But you don't always have those options. Is that likely to matter for most people to whom Nikon is marketing the 35/1.8 DX? Only the buyers know!<br /><br />Sorry those quick midnight test shots in a dim workshop aren't works of art, they were just to show the sort of situation in which a fast lens is quite handy. If I'd stopped down, I'd have been at a much slower shutter speed. Yes, a tripod, strobes... etc. But that's not always reality. For what it's worth, here's a tighter crop.</p><div></div>

<p>I love this lens. Pros: inexpensive, light, small (I pair it with a D40 and can take it pretty much everywhere), a very useful focal length, accurate focus, sharp even wide open, close focusing distance. Cons: green and purple fringing in certain lighting, and not the smoothest bokeh. (I also have the Sigma 50mm 1.4, with its buttery bokeh, but its size and weight keep me from carrying it around on a regular basis.)</p>

<p>I don't profess to be anything other than a passionate amateur, but you can see some of my photos with this lens here: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/natalieah23/tags/nikkor35mmf18afs/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/natalieah23/tags/nikkor35mmf18afs/</a></p>

<p>The manual focus on the Nikon 35 f1.8 sucks.</p>

<p>Matt,<br /> <br /> I'm on a break at work, so I'm skimming here. <br /> <br /> I did not see where you mentioned what two lenses you used for your test. The results are interesting, but after combing you post, <strong>I just don't see what two lenses were used for the two pictures.</strong> <br /> <br /> <strong>Can you please re-clarify</strong> which lens was used for the top photo and for the bottom? I'm very interested in this as I am looking at picking up a lens in the 30mm range very soon and trying to make a decision.<br /> <br /> Thanks in advance,<br /> Keith<br /> <em><br /> </em> <br /> <em>P.S., I have the Nikon 50 1.4 AFS and I am very happy with it. That however does not mean I wouldn't look into a Sigma, especially the 30 1.4.</em></p>

<p>I am also looking to purchase the Nikon 35 MM 1.8G and stumbled onto this thread. Let me throw another lens into the picture - Nikon 35 mm 2.0 AFD. Its a lens for FF. Does anyone have any experience of using this on DX? I am just starting out but have heard that a FF lense when used on DX bodies can give much better image quality. Also if one plans to move to FF sometime in the future, you can still use the lens.</p>

<p>Sorry, Keith. I was being deliberately coy about that, because the conversation had taken a small left turn into whether or not worrying about a prime lens's bokeh is a bit of vain frippery, or actually might matter sometimes. I was just illustrating that the differences can be very noticeable, and leaving it up to the viewer to project such differences into their own shots and their own lens shopping. I just wanted people to know <em>why</em> so many reviewers mention bokeh when also mentioning corner sharpness wide open, CA, and all the rest.<br /><br />In this particular case, the upper shot (of which a 100% crop is shown, farther down) is the Sigma 30/1.4, used at f/1.4. The lower shot is a Nikon 50/1.8, used at f/1.8. To keep perspective and subject-to-background distances the same, both were used from the same position, with the 30mm shot cropped a bit more aggressively to keep the examples consistent.<br /><br />The idea, there, is that we're shooting hand-held in a dim room, and opening up all the way to maximize AF peformance and increase shutter speed. At the expense, of course, of depth of field and sharpness. Nikon's less expensive primes haven't substantially changed their optical recipe in quite a while (better coatings and whatnot, of course) which is why it's easy to spot the differences between those simple Nikon lenses, and their counterparts from other makers who use a different recipe, or who are willing to make the lenses larger and heavier (hell, when Nikon's willing to make them larger or heavier, they also get very different results - see their two 85mm lenses as an example).<br /><br />In the case of Sigma's 30/1.4, and especially their 50/1.4 (which is full-frame design), you can really spot it, especially on the bokeh side of things. Again: <em><strong>if that matters to you</strong></em>, and it obviously doesn't to many people, for whom the savings are more important. Completely personal issue. <br /><br />My main point in all of this was to counter the notion of worrying whether a lens that costs $200 more is twice as good or not. I just think that's the wrong way to look at it. The lens is either worth what it does for you, or it's not. That's all there is to it. For me, the 30/1.4's extra cost continues to be worth it, compared to it's single nearest alternative (the 35/1.8). But honestly? Just the fact that it's 5mm wider may be the most important factor. That part matters to me - 5mm is noticeable on a DX body. <br /><br />Oh, and given the number of times it's been mentioned above, I supposed I should say that the two Sigma lenses I happen to use (the 30, and the 10-20 ultrawide) performed perfectly as delivered, and continue to. Never any need for a visit to Sigma. And that statistic isn't any more valuable, I suppose, than anyone else's anecdotes, either! But mine have earned their keep many times over, and I still like the results.</p>

<p>Matt, thanks for the samples. I'm sure most people here recognize that you never expect to get something that is twice as good when you spend twice as much, in a lens or anything else. As if you could even measure what "twice as good" is. It's a silly notion. </p>

<p>The question is how do the lenses differ and to what degree. Your samples do show a dramatic difference in bokeh. The top photo is a textbook "neutral" bokeh sample and the lower is textbook "bad" bokeh. It would be interesting to see a comparison with the 35/1.8 since that's what is being discussed here, but I'm sure there are lots of bokeh samples around for this lens for anybody who wants to look for them.</p>

<p>The other thing that struck me about your samples though was the difference in color rendition. I'm surprised nobody else has pointed it out. The top lens' colors look washed-out and muted compared to the bottom lens, and I'm curious whether it would be different stopped-down a bit. This would be much more important to me than either bokeh or sharpness in choosing between two lenses of this type. By the way, the 35/1.8 does seem to give very crisp, saturated colors.</p>

<p>Oh, I had a 50/1.8 for a while, and it was terrible at f/1.8. Far worse than yours for some reason.</p>

 

<p>Glenn: On the color rendition... shame on me. I just set ISO 200, aperture priority, and shot. The two were metered a bit differenly, probably because the 30 had a wider view of the scene, and the camera handled it differently. I did some utterly casual brightness/contrast adjustments and just let it slide, since I was really just pointing out the bokeh behavior in the Nikon prime. Those two shots are NOT to be considered fair comparisons of the color rendition, since they weren't handled the same way. I didn't want to get too picky with that stuff since it wasn't trying to be a direct comparison between two contenders for the same job. But I can sure see wh you'd bring that up. To handle that correctly, I'd have to manually expose, which I did not do, bad me. I can only grind so many axes at a time!</p>

<p>I was excited about the 35/1.8 AFS and was planning to buy one.<br>

Then I read about the C.A. and saw the results from several reviews. The C.A. when the lens is stopped down makes the lens unusable for me.<br>

Yes, I know my D300 fixes CA in-camera when I shoot jpegs. However I always shoot NEF.<br>

Yes, I know NX2 fixes CA. But I refuse to pay Nikon even more money for NX2 in order to get a usable image from a lens that should be designed not to have excessive CA. Even if NX2 was free, my work flow would require an additional step (CA removal).<br>

So, sadly the 35/1.8 AFS is not for me</p>

 

<p>I probably would have bought the Nikon 35mm f1.8 IF it was available the same time as Sigma 30mm 1.4.<br /> But I needed a fast lens for my D300 and Sigma was my best choice.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>In this particular case, the upper shot (of which a 100% crop is shown, farther down) is the Sigma 30/1.4,</p>

</blockquote>

<p>This is really what I wanted to know. I am leaning to the Sigma, especially since I want a lens that will work w/ my F100. My other option was the Nikon 35 f/2D, but I think I'll go w/ the Sigma.<br /> <br /> Also to note, I traded off the Nikon 50 f/1.8 exactly for the reason shown in your example. The little rings on the out of highlight areas are very distracting. My copy also seemed to have issues with flaring. On a happy note, I got the $89 I paid for the 50/1.8 back out of it when I sold it.<br>

Thanks for the info Matt.</p>

<p>Woops, Keith! The Sigma 30/1.4 is for DX-format bodies, not for full-frame 35mm (as in film) bodies. For (even better!) looking results that will go full-frame, it's Sigma's 50/1.4 HSM, or Nikon's 50/1.4 AF-S, with some important if subtle differences between the bokeh on those two. But if you actually want 30mm or so on your F100, the neither the Sigma being discussed here, nor Nikon's 35/1.8 will do the job and cover the whole frame. Alas, a 30/1.4 that WOULD cover an entire FX format sensor or film would be... a <em>lot</em> more expensive. Hundreds more.</p>

<p>to william hutton about the CA and it being excessive. I have a book by Tom Ang where he mentions what you have just said but as a plus for new lenses. He points out that since CA is easily fixable in Photoshop, ACR and other rendering programs, lens designers are free to ignore the engineering aspect of removing CA from physical lens design and focus on other areas like sharpness, etc. But he mentions that now that distortion and CA are easily controlled digitally, lens designers can focus on other aspects of lens design that cannot be fixed digitally.</p>

<p>from matt laur's post:<br>

"The idea, there, is that we're shooting hand-held in a dim room, and opening up all the way to maximize AF peformance and increase shutter speed."<br>

as i understand the workings of the camera, the AF only works wide open unless you engage the depth of field preview button. But the lens remains wide open until the moment before the shutter releases, so stopping down has no effect on AF performance whatsoever. <br>

am i mistaken or did that point slide into your post accidentally. either way, nice review of the two lenses. it's hard to find good comparisons side by side so you can see the little differences between lenses that justify the large price differential; when compared on different scenes, you cannot really isolate and notice the subtle differences that really make pictures pop and justify the love for lenses that people develop.</p>

<p>Keith, the Sigma 30mm is also a small-sensor lens, just like the Nikon 35/1.8. So it won't project a full image on the F100.</p>

<p>The 50mm f/1.8 is so-so wide open but gives excellent images from f/2.5 onwards.</p>

<p><em>Yes, I know NX2 fixes CA. But I refuse to pay Nikon even more money for NX2 in order to get a usable image from a lens that should be designed not to have excessive CA.</em></p>

<p>You can pretty much expect Nikon to design all their new glass to assume the CA correction of Capture NX2 or the camera is used. You get a smaller, lighter, and cheaper lens. Other software makers also have CA correction algorithms, though I don't really know how well they work in comparison to Nikon's.</p>

<p><em><em><strong>if that matters to you</strong> </em> , and it obviously doesn't to many people, for whom the savings are more important.</em></p>

<p>People's objections to 3rd party autofocus lenses have nothing at all to do with the price or the importance of bokeh.</p>

 

<p>Sorry my friends, but I cannot understand your comments, when you haven't share not even a photo to our club.</p>

<p>Dan: Yes, the lens is wide open when you're composing and focusing. But the wider the widest aperture of the lens, the more light the lens is delivering to the AF system. So, a kit zoom that can't open up past f/3.5 is delivering only a fraction of the room's light (compared to an f/1.4 or f/1.8 lens) to the sensor. That means that the conditions in which you can get the camera's AF to work quickly and reliably are extended greatly by using the faster lens.<br /><br />Say you're shooting in a concert venue, and don't want the camera's AF assist light to constantly shining into a performer's face while you compose. You can do that in dimmer light with a fast lens than you can with a slower lens. Even if you intend to have a strobe fire when you DO take the photo - and you might be telling the camera to use f/8 when that happens - the faster lens gives you a brighter viewfinder, and the AF more to chew on. That's an important part of having a faster lens.<br /><br />Ilkka: <em>People's objections to 3rd party autofocus lenses have nothing at all to do with the price or the importance of bokeh.</em> <br /><br />The main reason I even chimed in on this thread was in response to Dave's assertion that the price <em>is</em> in fact a reason not to get the third party lens in this case (twice the price, but not twice as good, etc).</p>

<p>" the chromatic aberation is very discreet. "</p>

<p>well, actually, nicolae, here's what photozone had to say about CAs on the 35/1.8: "Chromatic aberrations (color shadows at harsh contrast transitions) are moderate wide open, but rather high for the rest of the aperture range. This is a somewhat disappointing behaviour."</p>

<p>doesn't sound "discreet" to me, but for $200, i could live with it. also, thanks for correcting me on the metal mount, which is good to know. however, it does have a plastic filter thread, correct?</p>

<p>thanks, matt, for posting those images, which do effectively illustrate why some people would care about the differences between nikon and sigma primes.it's possible to coax decent OoF shots out of the 50/1.8 but it really requires carefulness, as that bokeh can be pretty harsh.</p>

<p>nikon is general isn't known for their bokeh and to get top-shelf performance in this area, you have to pay top-shelf prices for the 85/1.4, 70-200/2.8, or 105 DC. sigma has clearly emphasized this characteristic on their 30 and 50 primes and made it available at a price point which, while not entry-level, isnt out of reach either. sure, there are some compromises--the sigma 30 is just not very good in corners even stopped down to 5.6--but while this shows up on test charts, it's often a non-factor in real-world conditions, in my experience.i like the idea that a lens purchased for low-light conditions works well in those conditions. maybe that's just me.</p>

<p>and i'm not sure why anyone would buy a sub-2.8 prime to shoot landscapes at narrow apertures, but if that's a concern, the nikon is clearly better in that regard.</p>

<p>and just to reiterate, for $200, the 35/1.8 is definitely worth the money, especially for d40/d60 shooters. one shouldnt have to spend the equivalent of a new camera body just to get an acceptable lens for available-light work. if you're willing to spend time in post- correcting CAs--or have a d90 or d300, which auto-correct--this lens is a no-brainer for many folks. just dont expect non-jittery bokeh.</p>

<p><em>and i'm not sure why anyone would buy a sub-2.8 prime to shoot landscapes at narrow apertures, but if</em></p>

<p>Primes often give cleaner images and better detail near the edges than zooms (with the exception of wide angle primes designed for film but used on digital; a recipe for misery). I don't see why one would not use them for this application, perhaps someone can fill me in what I've been missing after 15 years of shooting landscapes with 50mm lenses....</p>

<p><em>if you're willing to spend time in post- correcting CAs-</em></p>

<p>If you use Capture, this happens automatically. And if you want decent high ISO image quality, you should probably be using it already. At least on D3/D700 files I've found it gives a significant edge over Adobe raw conversion software.</p>