Well, that’s not my best image, but it’s all I got from yesterday and sometimes it’s maybe more about showing up. I’ve spent a few days relaxing in the sunny south of Austria, now I’m back to Vienna and a completely different weather. You’ll see soon 🙂
Speaking of best images, we all know that votings on sites like Flickr, or in my case SmugMug, not necessarily reflect the real quality of our work, too much depends upon the time of day when we post, upon the pure chance that some people pick it up at roughly the same time, and whether one is a community builder or not, but for what it’s worth, I’d like to mention that since today “885 - The Beauty Of The Days Gone By” is my most popular image on SmugMug.
In the meantime the first reviews of the new Nikon AF-S 35/1.8G have come up, Photozone.de has a very technical one, thus I’ll spare you the brick wall 🙂
Yes, this lens has quite high barrel distortions. This may disappoint some, but again can’t trouble me much. As of this day, the lens is already supported by PTLens, and I’m sure that DxO Optics Pro will follow soon. Apart from that, even the simple correction in Photoshop will suffice for most applications. For images like today’s, correcting distortions is pointless anyway.
As to the quality loss due to software correction of distortions, well, there sure must be some loss, but current software algorithms are good enough to make it unrecognizable. I wouldn’t worry about it.
The review at Photozone mentions it and it was one of my first impressions, this may be fast glass, but the autofocus is far from fast and snappy. It works pretty well and accurate though. As to speed, I have tried tracking bicyclists on the road, and I had no problems at all. This sure ain’t no birding lens, but on the other hand, when you go birding with a 35mm, there’s either something wrong with you or the birds a damn big, and then they may as well be slow 🙂
Longitudinal CA are pretty high as well, but that’s normal for fast lenses. Even price and weight monsters like the Canon 50/1.2L suffer badly from them and, more in my price range, my beloved Sigma 50/1.4 has them as well. Didn’t take me from making good use of it.
Any final verdict, you ask? Well, this would be a fine standard lens at a higher price, and at around €200 it is a fantastic bargain. It has its share of weaknesses, but it is light and exceptionally sharp. If you are a Nikon DX format shooter, you can’t do wrong getting one.
The Song of the Day is “When The Sun Sets Down South (Southern Sunset)“by Sidney Bechet. I have it on disc 21 of “The Ultimate Jazz Archive” and Amazon has it for download on “Classic Sides 1937-1939” as well, though they don’t have that album on CD. This is the second time that I use this song, the first time was in “685 - When The Sun Sets”.