Like most photographers, I seriously suffer from GAS. GAS is an abbreviation which stands for a terrible disease: the Gear Acquisition Syndrome. People suffering from GAS have a permanent mental shopping list of the gear they think they need to acquire in order to take even better photos.
Recently I was tempted to buy the new Lumix 50 1.8 mm lens for my Panasonic S5. When I was contemplating on this, I realized I had not taken that many pictures with my Nikkor 50 1.8 mm G lens which I bought 5 years ago.
The reason is that I never warmed up to 50 mm lenses. I found the angle of a 50 mm lens too narrow for landscapes, and not wide enough for landscapes and architecture. For this reason, I always preferred the Tamron 35 1.8 mm SP on my Nikon Full Frame camera, or the Olympus 17 mm 1.8 on my micro four third cameras.
Nevertheless, the Nifty Fifty, as the 50 mm lens is affectionately called, was the lens of choice of Henri Cartier-Bresson (you know ‘The decisive moment one’), and if it was good enough for Henri, it sure must be good enough for me!
Therefore, I decided to set myself a challenge. For a couple of weeks, I would use the combination of my Nikon D750 camera with the Nikkor 50 1.8 mm lens, as much as I could.
As it happens, luck favored the brave! During my first trip I bumped into Jan van Zanen, mayor of The Hague. Jan clearly saw the humor and even took a special pose at my request.
I also took some pictures of interesting white, or white & green, wedding vehicles around the city hall of the Hague.
Finally I took some pictures of a flea market in Switzerland.
I really liked working with the lens. Of course an aperture of 1.8 means that it is a fast lens with a small depth of field. However the combination with my Nikon D750 works especially well. The D750 camera is a relatively heavy camera, but the 50 mm 1.8 G lens is quite light so the combination is quite manageable. Furthermore the 24 Megapixel sensor of the D750 allows for a fair bit of cropping.
All in all, I must say that I am slowly warming up to my Nikon 50 mm 1.8 lens and the concept of 50 mm lenses in general!
I hope you like my work. Let me know in the comments.
All pictures taken with the Nikon D750 camera and the Nikkor 50 mm 1.8 G lens.
All photo’s can be seen in high resolution, and with all technical data, on Flickr.
Dutch Aperture 