OK, so even though I had the Nikon D90 practically the first week it was available and now bought the brand new Nikon 50mm 1.4S AF lens I just want you to know I won’t and can’t always be spending like this! This camera was a long-planned purchase, and I still hope to finish out my kit with a zoom lens and a flash. That will probably be another thousand dollars, so you won’t see me purchasing them for a while since I’m currently unemployed!

Thanks to advice from my friend and professional/photography mentor Stephen Trainor, I decided my first priority was a lens capable of natural light photography.

My kit lens’ aperture only goes down to f/3.5. This one goes down to f/1.4. The lower the number the more light the lens is capable of letting in. When taking indoor candids you are usually dealing with low light.

Here is an example taken with my new lens (sorry I was too lazy to change it out for the demo) but I purposely left the aperture at f/4.0, close to my kit lens’ limit. I did not use the flash. Even if I had tried to avoid the flash the other day, so that I wouldn’t miss that Nutcracker moment, it would have still been too dark as you can see with this shot.

Now, here is a shot taken moments later, properly exposed at f/2.8 aperture and 800 ISO (worked best with all the examples below). Also without the flash. Big difference.

Just to show you the lowest aperture, here it is at f/1.4. Now the highlights are blown out (over exposed/too light.) But, in some rooms of my house, with less available light, I could definitely go down to f/1.4. And, a funny aside, I took a shot of the back of my husband’s throat today at f/1.4 aperture and it turned out great! I won’t go into it, but suffice to say I figured he better get some immediate usage out of my latest purchase.

BTW, if you are seeing some yellow stuff on my children’s faces, it is evidence that this photo shoot was completely impromptu. KFC mac and cheese and an occasional runny nose. It wasn’t so obvious to me until I had it on screen, but I wasn’t about to go re-shoot everything! Besides my models were growing uncooperative!

I’ll close with a nice (please ignore the cheese I just noticed) headshot of Danielle taken at f/2.4. And one from today taken of Raeleigh (clean face, yay!) at f/1.6.

I hope to try out some snow pics with my new lens next. If I have any great lessons learned I’ll be sure to share! Things are going to get busy around here, so if you don’t see anything from me for a week or so “Merry Christmas!”

One Response to “My New Nikon 50mm 1.4S AF Lens”