Permanent Tourist

Forgive me a moment of extreme geekiness. I am over-excited about a new (second-hand) lens I’ve bought today: the autofocus 50mm f1.8 Nikkor. When I first started taking photos with an SLR, way back in the mid-1980s, I used an Olympus OM-10 with the standard 50mm lens. The shallow depth of field is quite beautiful at such a wide aperture, creating very sharp focus on the subject and a totally blurred background at regular focussing distances. I’ve missed taking photos in this style: I’ve come close in the past year or so with my 24mm/f2.8 wide angle lens, but the wider angle means that there’s more to see of a distracting background. With this 50mm lens, (which converts to a slight telephoto effect thanks to the digital conversion factor of around 1.5 in the Nikon range) I can now get the close crop and shallow depth of field: a hallmark of my better photographic efforts while I was shooting on Ilford FP4 film. Expect to see the results here (in my photo galleries and in my Flickr photostream) soon.