::Brother and Sister::
For Mother’s Day, my amazing husband organised a wonderful surprise. In amongst the gorgeous smiles, smoochie kisses, squishy hugs and one very special handmade felt bird – was a ‘Nifty Fifty’ aka Nikon’s Nikkor 50mm 1.8d lens. I’ve long been wanting a pancake lens for our Nikon D3000, to make it a little more portable and not so cumbersome as it is with the standard 18-55mm lens it comes with. Whilst the Nikon body is still rather large and not as compact as say the Panasonic gf1, it still manages to fit into my handbag and be taken out and about with ease – just!
::Sorting rose-hips for drying, eating fresh and making syrup::
In all the years we’ve had the Nikon D3000 we’ve been really happy with the photo’s it takes and how easy it is to use on both auto and manual settings. Short of delving deeply into the finer manual settings, I thought I had a pretty good handle on understanding and using this camera. Then the Nifty Fifty came along and really pulled the rug out from underneath me. Seriously, this thing is a magic lens and can take some phenomenal photos, but you really have to know what you’re doing.
::Corn cobs for lunch::
As you can probably guess the past few days we’ve been taking a phenomenal amount of blurry, blown out, under exposed and just plain awful photos being taken on our camera. Don’t get me wrong, the Nifty Fifty is an amazing lens and we’re excited to have it – it’ll just take a little bit of getting used to – it’s definitely not a point and shoot with ease lens.
::Practising ballet | Homeschooling | Horse Riding | Collecting wood::
Therefore, here’s a photo heavy post for you with some of the better shots – which are still not perfect – that we’ve fluked taking over the past few days. In all honestly, this lens is a lot of fun to play with and it really pushes you to deepen your understanding of photography – I’m excited about figuring it all out and taking some really amazing photos. So far I love the fact that this lens really handles low light situations wonderfully. The depth of field range on the lens is also really impressive and the portraits it takes are quite gorgeous. I’ve always loved the warmth to the Nikon images, it’s the main reason we chose a Nikon when we were purchasing our dslr. However in these low light conditions with the Nifty Fifty, I really feel the images have just too much warmth to the light – hoping we can figure out how to manage that a little. Any suggestions on using the Nifty Fifty or constructive feedback on the images we’ve been taking with this new lens would be most appreciated.
::Sakura Bloom back-carry mastered after watching this great tutorial::
Tell me – what’s your favourite lens for your dslr and what are the features that made you fall in love with it?
::Preparing for the Tooth Fairy’s 6th visit::
I love my nifty-fifty. Even with all th lenses I own, it is one of my favorite. I use it mostly at 1.8, 2, 2.2 or 2.8 to really take advantage of it’s beautiful bokeh. Careful with your white balance (maybe set it to automatic the 3000 is pretty good at finding the right white balance I think.) You can adjust it in Lightroom (or manually on your camera). Some of your photos are really orange (the skin is always a great place to check your white balance).
Thank you so much Catherine for your feedback. We will definitely take your advice to the camera. I’ll let you know how it goes. You are such a photography inspiration for me and you were our Nikon inspiration all those years ago. I remember loving the gorgeous warmth of your photos, emailing you with all those questions and asking “which camera do you use” 🙂
It’s mostly those last pics of the tooth cleaning isn’t it – regarding the orange skin. Those photos were taken in quite low light in the home at night. To be honest, without this lens, we’ve never really managed to take any decent shot at all in this kind of light – so these are a bonus. But that is what I was meaning with ‘too much warmth’ – I couldn’t even adjust it out when I was editing the photos on the computer. I’ll play with the white balance and see how that goes. I really appreciate your feedback.
I do love though that the images needed very little editing to make them quite vibrant – even raw they were really gorgeous.
Yes, your images are gorgeous. In low light situations inside, at night, choose the Incandescent setting (light bulb) for the white balance setting (in-camera). It will make a huge difference! Enjoy that great lens!
Oh Thanks Catherine – we’ll try it out today and tonight 🙂