The Walking Around Lens

Blue Jay.egg on Aviary.

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I’m bad to play favorites when it comes to lenses. When one comes my way that I like the perspective, sharpness and the overall way it handles it’s going to stay on my camera 90% of the time. Any photography that is honest about their style will admit they have one lens they can not function without.

My all time favorite working lens is the Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 manual focus which I keep on a FM2 or F3 depending on how much weight I wanted to carry around. Keep mind that I’m talking about the film days. On another camera body I had a Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 for wide shots. I kept a Nikkor 35mm f/1.4 and a Nikkor 180 f/2.8 in the camera bag I carried for when the need arised for either. Also in the bag is three Vivitar 283 strobes, but that’s an entirely different story.

The reasons the 105 is my go-to lens are because it’s super sharp, small, rather fast at f/2.5 and has a shallow depth of field to separate the subject from the rest of the scene. The short telephoto as allowed me to make and capture eye contact with a subject without moving into their comfort zone. When Nikon quite production on the 105mm f/2.5 I picked up another one just in case…

Since the move to digital I had to adjust to several changes that weren’t in my usual photographic routine, one of the biggest changes was autofocus (AF) lenses. I had avoided AF altogether while shooting film. I worked for a camera store when the first AF lenses where coming out and I wasn’t impressed – they were slower than I operated and just felt child’s toy when you held them. I was forced to add some newer glass in the wide angle department because the DX format multiplies the focal length and all I could get was AF. Fortunately the engineers at Nikon have improved the speed and optical bench on the latest generation of lenses.

When I decided to buy a small dSLR to use for personal photos when I’m out walking around I went for the “kit” that had the Nikkor18-55mm and 55-200 VR lenses, the price was right and the overall weight wasn’t like my working bag. What I found was that I was keeping the 55-200 lens on the camera all the time. Granted it is not the fastest ship in the Nikon Armada and it is not perfect through the whole range of focal length and aperture settings compaired to Nikon’s higher price lenses. Where is lens shines is in it’s size, focal range and vibration reduction (VR).

The photograph above isn’t the greatest, but when you consider how I shot it you can see how this lens shows it’s strength. The lens was at 200mm (or equal to 300mm on a 35mm format camera) at f/5.6 with a 1/60 second exposure at 800 I.S.O. and taken at 7:30pm under a canopy of trees, all while being hand held. The photo on the screen can’t match the colors and sharpness I got when I printed the photo out on an Epson Stylus Photo R2880 printer. If I had taken the photo without a VR lens there wouldn’t be much to see. For a lens targeted for the casual user the 55-200mm VR Nikkor is ultimate sleeper that packs a lot of bang for the money. It has earned a place in my around neighborhood and recreational photography equipment line-up.

In Case You Haven’t Noticed…
I’m in the middle of a layout change and adding some extra features since moving to a new server. I’ve had a lot of e-mails about the Flock of Twitters page and wanting to know how it is down. Sorry if I haven’t answered all you yet, but I will post a how-to with screen shots later today if you are wanting to add something similar.

Nikkor 55-200mm VR Lens on Ebay