When it comes to photography, I am definitely someone who loves to see innovation. That might be an eye detection autofocus system like that on the Nikon Z7ii, or an innovative lens like a built in teleconverter in the 180-400mm F4 AF-S. I love seeing cutting edge improvements in equipment.
However, I don’t want to be that photographer who always has to have then newest piece of equipment when it comes out. (But I don’t mind being that photographer who buys gently almost new equipment from the person who is alway upgrading to the newest equipment.) I remind myself that today’s newest and brightest innovation will be old news a few years down the road. This is especially true of cameras.
The pace at which cameras change is much faster than the changes that are made with lenses. You may not notice the difference between a 10 year old lens a brand new lens. But you will notice the difference with a 10 year old camera and a brand new camera. A great lens will stand the test of time. I have always thought of lenses as equipment that I can invest in and use for many years while cameras tend to be replaced.
This is actually quite contrary to the way that someone who is buying their first camera thinks. They concentrate on the camera they want to get but not the lens that they will put on it. They often settle for a cheaper lens with the camera they choose. I know this because when friends are looking to purchase a camera they often ask me. They always ask which camera they should buy but never ask about a lens.
“Great lenses will outlast great cameras.”
The Nikon 17-35mm f2.8 is over 20 years old and is still sold today. When I first bought this lens there were only film cameras for me to use it with. Now I use this same lens with my digital cameras. It is a great lens. It has been a great investment.
There are some popular focal lengths of lenses that are frequently updated which taut better performance than the last version. The popular Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 lens has had 4 new versions in the last 18 years. Meanwhile, the Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 was released in 2007 and hasn’t been updated for the last 14 years.
There are some older manual focus lenses that were introduced in the 1980s that are still made and sold today. That brings us to the lens that I am using.
The Nikon 28mm f2.8 AIS manual focus lens
The 28mm f2.8 AIS lens is one of the best manual focus wide angle lenses Nikon has even made. Unlike its predecessors, which only had 5 lens elements, this version has 8 elements in 8 groups. This allowed the Nikon engineers to have an unprecedented level of correction and sharpness. You can have a bright light source in your image and get no ghosting or flare.
In addition to this it has a 7 blade aperture diaphragm which translates into beautiful out of focus backgrounds. Not only that, but it can focus down to 21 cm (around 8.3 inches) so you can get close to your subject.
First made in 1981, this lens has stood the test of time and I love having it in my camera bag. Simply put, it is one of the most incredible manual focus wide angle lenses that you could ever put on a Nikon camera.
I decided to pair the 28mm f2.8 AIS with my Nikon Df camera because the DF has a special feature. A metering coupling lever that can pop out so you can use older AIS lenses with the camera.
I can enter the details of the lens into the Nikon Df and then I can use the lens just like any other manual focus lens.
Nikon has a great explanation about using legacy lenses with the Nikon Df if you are looking for more information.
The challenge I set myself was to photograph shadows with the Df and the 28mm. Whenever I am photographing shadows, I always think about how the image might look when converted to black and white. So I converted some of the final images into black and white. I could have always changed my picture control setting to monochrome like I did for a previous challenge, but I decided against it. The great thing about a manual focus lens is that I slow down and I am very purposeful with my composition.
I hope you like the first person perspective video I made of me capturing shadow images with the Nikon Df.
