Ray S. wrote:
Thanks Joe. It was a lot of your very early shots with the 58, way back when, that put this lens on my radar. It's a focal length I wouldn't have ordinarily been interested in, but a lot of your work, particularly shooting ballet, really showed it's potential. I'm really enjoying it a lot. Went out with just the 58 and Zeiss 25 with my DF today and it felt like a combination I'd be happy to carry a lot. With maybe the little Voigtlander 20 in there for really wide stuff...
-Ray
Thanks Ray. Funny how this lens was quite divisive early on with many harsh critics. I believe there are still many critics, but it's just a case of a growing number of skilled photographers showing the capabilities of this lens. I think of the 58 as a mini 85 and it makes for a nice, small walk around kit with a 24 or 20 as you suggest. Keep up the great work.
Heres another from your area Ray. Breaking the wide open rule this thread seems to have.
I should sell this lens I really don't use it enough wide open and no point having it for smaller apertures.
I searched this thread to see if anyone shoots the Nikon 58mm 1.4 on a DX camera. I found a discussion about buying a D7000 for a spouse, but otherwise . . . nothing.
Other than the price, the 58mm 1.4 seems like an ideal DX portrait lens. Does anyone use it as such?
Background: I have no immediate plans (or means, for that matter) to buy this lens, but I am curious. I love the Tamron 60mm f/2 as a portrait lens on my D7000, other than missing an occasional shot in low light when the lens s-l-o-w-l-y racks through the entire focus range before giving up.
Bruce_T wrote:
I searched this thread to see if anyone shoots the Nikon 58mm 1.4 on a DX camera. I found a discussion about buying a D7000 for a spouse, but otherwise . . . nothing.
Other than the price, the 58mm 1.4 seems like an ideal DX portrait lens. Does anyone use it as such?
Background: I have no immediate plans (or means, for that matter) to buy this lens, but I am curious. I love the Tamron 60mm f/2 as a portrait lens on my D7000, other than missing an occasional shot in low light when the lens s-l-o-w-l-y racks through the entire focus range before giving up. ...Show more →
If you check out Flickr groups dedicated to this lens, you'll see quite a few shots taken with DX. Agree, it's a great portrait length with DX. Or with cropped FX... One of the things I'm enjoying is shooting slightly less tight portraits with it at it's native focal length, but crops look great too...
Bruce_T wrote:
Thank you, Ray - I'm off to check Flickr now.
Edit: I'm back. (Almost) nuthin'. Mostly DF and D810. Almost no DX. Good idea, though.
I'd have sworn when I was obsessing over this lens (before I'd ever shot with it), I saw a lot of DX shots on Flickr. Today, I can't find any either - maybe I was making it up? It makes sense that, as expensive a lens as it is, it wouldn't be the most common purchase for a DX user, but then people use DX for a lot of reasons and price isn't always one of them. Regardless, there's no reason this lens wouldn't be an incredible 85-90mm equivalent portrait lens on DX if you chose to go that way...
Thanks again, Ray. I plan to make some changes to my kit this spring, so I am in the obsessive research phase. If I go with a longer (90 - 105mm) macro I keep coming back to the 58mm 1.4, seeing all of the lovely pictures, and checking used prices.
I also need to find a camera store that is not a madhouse and check whether the longer eye relief on a D750 or D610 works better with glasses vs the D7x00 series. Kinda hoping the answer is "no" because switching to FX would be costly.
Anyway, thanks again for taking the time to answer my questions. We can now return to our regularly scheduled bokehfest.
Jason_Brook wrote:
I wouldn't waste this lens on dx. You lose the massive transitions and that's where the magic happens.
I'm not sure I get that. Not saying you're wrong and you definitely have more experience with this lens than I do, but 58mm f1.4 is still 58mm f1.4 whether FX or DX, it's just over a smaller field with DX. I just shot two basically identical shots with stuff in the foreground and various distances in the background with my DF in FX mode and then another in DX mode. The focus transitions, the bokeh, etc, are all the same - it just pulls everything in a bit tighter by virtue of being over a smaller area. I'm not saying I'd have bought this lens if I was a DX shooter, but if I ever found a reason to add a DX body, I can imagine using this lens with it as a nice short portrait length...
Ooops - ignore the titles - this was quick and dirty and I didn't change the import titles from the last shooting I was doing with a little 135 f2.8 AI...
Jason, I appreciate your perspective, and Ray, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to post a direct FX / DX comparison (nice kitchen!). Mmmm, dog food and bourbon.
In my ideal, budget-limited world Nikon would make a 58 or 60mm f/1.8G or Tamron would continue their series of new primes with a 60mm f/1.8ish lens, VC a bonus, that kept the good qualities of their 60mm f/2 macro (sharp, gorgeous bokeh) while improving the focus speed.
Anyway, I do appreciate you all taking the time to respond and offer your perspectives. Having choices can be a mixed blessing.
Hi, new here. Not new to photography - been in the Nikon family since 1984. Not a huge computer guy, but I'm working on it. Just wondering if anyone has done a comparison between the Nikon 58, the Voigtlander 58 & the Lensbaby velvet. Yes I know the Nikon is AF. It's also 3x as much$$$ as the other two choices. I'm thinking of shooting some soft dreamy style portraits. I have seen beautiful work on the net shot with each lens. Should my cash flow increase I will go Nikon, but if not I may look at other brands. Any thoughts, comments etc..?
Crisman wrote:
Hi, new here. Not new to photography - been in the Nikon family since 1984. Not a huge computer guy, but I'm working on it. Just wondering if anyone has done a comparison between the Nikon 58, the Voigtlander 58 & the Lensbaby velvet. Yes I know the Nikon is AF. It's also 3x as much$$$ as the other two choices. I'm thinking of shooting some soft dreamy style portraits. I have seen beautiful work on the net shot with each lens. Should my cash flow increase I will go Nikon, but if not I may look at other brands. Any thoughts, comments etc..?...Show more →
I don't know anything about the Lensbaby velvet - never hear of it to be honest. But I just spent a couple weeks shooting alternatively with the Nikon and Voigtlander. They're both wonderful lenses, but with some tradeoffs. I find the Voigtlander(s) a little cooler than Nikon's color signature generally, but both are great. AF vs MF is the biggest obvious difference. I really like the tactile feel and shooting experience with the Voigtlander a LOT and with the 58G not so much. BUT, if you're shooting people a lot (and the Nikon is made for shooting people), I find the AF incredibly helpful at this focal length.
And then there's the rendering. The Voigtlander strikes me as a little sharper in general (I'm not checking corner sharpness with a lens where the corners are gonna be out of focus 99% of the time anyway), but not by a lot, and not necessarily in a more pleasing way than the Nikon. Both have really nice foreground in to out of focus transitions and bokeh, but the Voigtlander has slightly nervous background bokeh in some circumstances. If the subject is close (and the Voigtlander focuses a bit closer than the Nikon) and the background some distance away, the bokeh is pretty equally good between the two. But as the subject gets farther away and/or the background gets closer, the Voigtlander shows a bit more definition to the bokeh. It's a long long way from harsh, but the Nikon is just so buttery smooth under almost any situation.
The Voigtlander is a killer value - probably underpriced by a few hundred $$ and it's built like a tank, with great manual focus action and an aperture ring. I love aperture rings and hate using the rear dial for aperture control, so for me, that's a real plus for the Voigtlander. OTOH, there are times when AF comes in REALLY handy. And ultimately, the rendering of the Nikon was just more consistently to my liking. I'd love to keep both, but the economics of the situation was that if I was gonna get the Nikon I had to be offloading some un-used lenses, not buying additional stuff alongside it.
I put up a series of Voigtlander shots a few pages back, here:
You can compare those to the many fine examples of Nikon shots in the thread. There's also a pretty decent Flickr comparison if you run these two groups side by side you'll see both the similarities and the differences:
I decided to get the Nikon, but if I was less enamored of this focal length or was a bit more agile with manual focus, I MIGHT have decided differently. But the rendering of the Nikon is so predictably sweet that I think that was what ultimately made it a sort of easy decision...
Just checked out the Lensbaby Velvet - that lens looks like it could be a LOT of fun. If it really was 50 years old and could be had on ebay for $50, I'd be all over it. It's too much of a specialty lens for $500, but a really trippy sort of look anywhere near wide open...
Jason_Brook wrote:
I wouldn't waste this lens on dx. You lose the massive transitions and that's where the magic happens.
I have to agree with this. While shooting DX, body or crop mode, you essentially lose a big portion of the lens' character. While the examples below lack a good showcasing of what I am trying to say, I believe that it is still easy to differentiate the two by simply observing the way the image is rendered overall.
