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The 50mm 1.8D
Last October I picked up a 1.8d 50mm lens for my Nikon D3100. Since then, I’ve had it on my camera 95% of the time.
The quality this lens provides is just so much better than the included 15-55mm lens. Pictures come out much sharper and the depth of field and bokeh this lens provides is top notch. I really do love this lens… but I hate it with the D3100. Here’s why:
1. You have to manually focus.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve used film cameras in the past and had to manually focus. It’s fun and makes taking pictures fun. The issues is the rangefinder on the D3100 is not that accurate or is sometimes random. The rangefinder is this little line at the bottom of the viewfinder that you can see when you look through it. When you focus, a little line moves to the left and right, and when its in the center then the thing you’re looking at is supposed to be in focus. It’s tedious to use this because it always seems like its jumping except when you’re extremely still.
I find myself shutting off the rangefinder altogether because its distracting. Thing is, I don’t have the best eyes so sometimes I get blurry shots.
So my point is that the issue is not that you have to manually focus, its that the camera itself is not really designed to be used with a manual focus lens so it makes it a pain when you want to do so.
2. 50mm is not 50mm.
When you use a 50mm lens on a film camera it looks almost like your own eye. When you put the viewfinder up to your eye it shows relatively the same thing your eye is seeing. When you put the viewfinder of the D3100 up to your eye while using the 50mm, it looks like you’re much more zoomed in. It actually looks like you’re using a 80mm lens.
The reason for this is because DX format digital cameras, such as the D3100, have a smaller sensor than FX cameras or 35mm film cameras. A 35mm film camera has an exposure area of 24x36mm, while the D3100’s sensor is 15.8×23.6mm. This means that the DX sensor is 1.5x smaller than a film camera’s exposure area and shows an area 1.5x longer than a 35mm film camera.
So in layman’s terms, the 50mm lens on the D3100 is actually 80mm.
This is annoying because a 50mm is supposed to be a walk around lens. It’s supposed to show something really close to what your eyes see. With the 50mm on a D3100, you actually have an 80mm view, so its difficult to get things that your eye is seeing. Everything is just too zoomed in for this to be a walk around lens.
3. 1.8 is not that sharp and the camera only wants to use 1.8.
You buy a f1.8 lens because you want to create some awesome bokeh! This lens does do bokeh pretty well… but don’t expect your subject to be as sharp as when you’re shooting at f2.5+. I find that shots at f1.8 come out soft… the bokeh is great but your subject comes out being too soft. It’s not really a huge complaint because you can sharpen the image in Lighroom or Photoshop.
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Example of the 50mm 1.8D’s awesome bokeh!
If you do want to shoot in something other than 1.8, your only choice is to always be in aperture priority mode because if you leave the camera in auto, 90% of the time it chooses 1.8 aperture. This becomes an issue when you want to just pick up the camera and take a quick photo of your niece or child running around.
And there’s lots of times when I just want to take a picture of two or three people in one shot and one person’s face comes out blurry. The camera sticks to 1.8. You gotta spin that dial in aperture priority mode to 3.5 or higher to do group shots.
4. What if you want someone else to take a photo of you?
So you can live with being stuck in aperture priority mode and always having to manually focus, but what if you want to pass the camera to a friend so they can take a picture of you with a friend or something? Will they know what aperture to set the camera at so the picture comes out clear? Will they manually focus correctly? I’ve handed my D3100 to a friend and asked them to take a picture of me and someone else and it just came out blurry and horrible.
The 50mm 1.8d is a great picture taker that produces sharp wonderful photos, but the issues that come along with using the lens on the D3100 make it a no buy recommendation from me.
My Recommendation
Save up and get the 1.8G 35mm. It won’t be so zoomed in like the 50mm on the D3100, and it automatically focuses and will pick the correct aperature much better because it is a digital lens.
Image may be NSFW.
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