Cotteridge, August 8th
The lens than came with the D70 goes from 18-70mm. While this isn’t as much zoom as I’m used to (more on this later) it is much wider. I’ve been loving the fixed 28mm lens with the manual FM2 so being able to pull back even further is great. There’s a little bit of fisheye, understandably, but that’s the nature of these things. While the width is good for getting whole buildings in it’s actually the foreground that’s gotten me most excited.
I know what you mean. I have a 20mm Nikkor lens which was fantastic on the F5 (35mm) but just so-so on the D200 where it thinks it’s a 30mm lens, hardly an extreme wide angle! 18mm is 27mm in 35mm-speak so you are not really gaining very much over the 28mm on the FM2.
Confused?
Digital format ultra wide angles that are not fish eye are not common and not cheap. Ah well, there had to be some give and take for all that instant gratification that digital gives!
Hang on – surely the lense (Nikkor AF-S DX G) that came with the D70 is built for digital so 18mm will be 18mm? Right?
18mm on the D70 is certainly wider than the 28mm on the FM2. I wonder if it works backwards and would be an 8mm lens on the FM2? I’m not about to try it though!
Here is a review of the lens in question:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/1870.htm
and here is an extract from it “This 18 – 70 is similar to a 27 – 105 mm on a 35 mm film camera”.
DX lenses may possibly fit onto a standard 35mm body (chances are they will) but the acceptable field of view is limited to the APS format and serious edge effects will be seen using 35mm film.
I would guess that sooner or later we will stop thinking 35mm and start thinking APS format. In which case 50mm will no longer be “standard” but “portrait”.
Yeah, that doesn’t look like 18mm to me, nearer 28. And it’s not fisheye effect, strictly speaking it’s vertical convergence, or keystoning it’s sometimes called.
I have a 15mm manual lens that’s about the size and weight of a cricket ball. And an 18mm that isn’t. Lovely lenses, but you just need to go with the flow with the convergence, it’s part of their charm. Jon Madison on Flickr uses a very wide lens on a Bessa R rangefinder for portraits, and very successfully. Weird, but very good.