Museum Day

Yesterday I visited the Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand exhibit at the Met, and took along the D90 so I could get a feel for the AF-S DX NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8G.

The camera and lens fit perfectly inside a Lowepro TLZ Mini even with the hood attached. I swapped out the lens cap for a Seculine Vivicap so I could take custom white balance readings if necessary. The flash diffuser and lens pen easily fit inside the outer pocket. If I needed to, I could have shoehorned some filters in there as well. Everything was nice and compact.

Our first stop at the Greek and Roman statuary provided some interesting opportunities. Museum photography means no flash, so a fast lens like the AF-S DX 35 is just the ticket. With this lens mounted, the camera was the perfect weight with a nice center of gravity. Shooting initially at ISO 200, I found myself switching to 400 only under very dim lighting conditions, or when I really wanted to shoot at f/5.6, which I did most of the time. The lowest I needed to go was f/2.8.

Shooting with a prime lens is like riding a bicycle; you never forget. If all you’ve ever experienced is a zoom lens, you might find it a bit restrictive. But if you have experience with prime lenses, it comes right back, and in moments, this apparent restriction becomes transparent. They say that if you lose one of your senses, the others take over. It’s like that with primes. Without the ability to stand in one place and frame your subject perfectly with a quick flick of the wrist, you find yourself approaching the subject from different angles and distances, since you have to move around anyway. This leads to better photos. With a zoom lens, I would probably have stood far away and zoomed in, creating flat images. With a normal lens close up, the images have a more three-dimensional perspective. With a wide angle close up, they would have taken on an exaggerated, distorted quality.

Even though this is a 35mm lens, you’re only using part of its projection, so the perspective, the whole experience, is essentially the same as a 35mm/FX camera with a 50mm lens. But, this is a 35mm lens, so it also has many of the qualities of a wide angle lens, such as close focus capability.

Recalling my previous experience with 35mm SLRs, it was immediately apparent that I could focus much more closely with this normal lens than I ever could using an SLR. When it came time to snap a photo of an ancient coin, I was amazed at how closely I could focus. Whatever else I photographed, I could always get in as tightly as I needed do. One of the strategies when photographing in a museum is to get tight shots in order to “crop out” unwanted backgrounds and people. This was a perfect lens to do that with.

In one instance, I had difficulty focusing on the subject because it was behind glass. I wasted no time in switching to manual to get exactly the focus I wanted. It was easy and transparent. I didn’t even need to take my eye off the finder, because the AF/M switch on the D90 is tactile and easy to find. The switch on the lens does exactly the same thing on this lens, but finding it is a little more challenging.

I also didn’t need to switch from the finder to adjust exposure compensation. The “Easy Exposure Compensation” feature of the D90 allows you to set EC with the other command dial and see the results directly in the finder. It’s so intuitive. No fiddling with buttons and looking at the top LCD. Once the picture is taken, I can actually glance down at the histogram on the color LCD without taking my eye from the finder. Just try that with a rangefinder! Honestly, the finder experience is what truly sells the SLR.

So, today’s experience was comfortably familiar, and yet immediately gratifying, words that describe photography at its best.