Nikon 24mm F/2.0 AIS

This photo of the National Cathedral was taken during a clear evening last March during the dawn of springtime. I used my trusty Nikon D50 (my digital SLR with my 24mm F/2.0 AIS manual focus lens. I had purchased this lens used last fall in Paris, France where I was living at the time. It has some dents on the outside and the glass is scratched in a few places but still works fine. In purchasing this lens I wanted to have a wide angle prime that was fairly fast (faster then f/2.8 at least) for low light conditions. Although a stop slower, I think of it as sort of my poor man's Nikon 24mm f/1.4 which is too expensive for my blood. Of course given the crop factor of the DX format, this lens becomes a 36mm moderate wide angle instead of a 24mm wide angle.

I took this photo with the lens wide open at f/2.0 at ISO 200. Wide open, this lens can be on the soft side. However, I wanted to focus on the branches instead of the Cathedral itself. Given the large DOF associated with such a wide angle lens, even with the lens shot wide open, one can not really isolate the branches from the cathedral at this distance.

The second shot is another an example of other use for a fast wide angle lens; shooting up close an object with the lens wide open. This photo, which was shot on the grounds of the National Cathedral, was shot at f/2.0 as well.

The photo was shot in darker conditions with the lens aperture once again set at f/2.0. The shutter speed was set to 1/3 sec and the ISO at 800.