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 pu
rchasing 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 t
he 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.
f/2.8
f/2.8
f/1.8
f/2.0
