Lenses for B&W photograhy ?

[Hahabas]

I am going to buy Nikon N80 with series of lenses.(according to the recommendation here)I would like to know which lenses would be my first best choices ? I have 750 $ budget for lenses. Someone has suggested these lenses 24/2.8 35/2 50/1.8 85/1.8 what do you say ? I am into B&W full body shots (enviromental nudes), B&W Urban snapshot (stories from the city life) (Please Have a look at the photography samples which I like) Thanks for assistance
Hamdi Hakan

[Gerry Widen]

All of the primes you mentioned are quality fast lenses. And any can be used for your subject matter. You can shoot nudes with wide angle lenses as well as 100 lenses. Same goes for street shooting and the like. It depends on how you approach photography. In general primes give sharper results and are faster and zoom lenses will give you all of your focal lengths in one lens. I would recommend starting with Nikons 28-105 it is a good quality zoom and will cover almost your entire focal length range. But it is a little slow. I would then try to decide on one prime mainly for a faster lens. The 50 1.8 is very sharp and is in the middle focal length wise. They are also inexpensive around $100. Use these two lenses for a while before deciding. You will still have almost half your budget left.

[Jeff82]

Looks like an excellent selection of lenses. Here are a few additional comments. The 24/2.8 is a great lens, so is the 35/2.0. I question whether you need both. For about $200 you can get a 28/2.8, and would would probably not need the other two. Starting out, you might want to go with just one of these wide angle lenses. Then decide to get a second one, if you feel you need it.

The 50 1.8 is another excellent and inexpensive choice. The 60mm 22.8 macro is an excellent, but more exensive substitute. If you don't plan to get deep into macro photography, the 50 1.8 will work fine.

The 85 1.8 is another all time great Nikkor lens. I really can't criticize it much, it's just superb. It also works great with a 2x telconverter when additional reach is needed.


I'd try to narrow it down to three lenses. You may even eventually find that many times you'll just want to work with two. That's what I find myself doing.

The Nikkor 28-105 suggestion is also a really good to to consider.

--Jeff

[another view]

Those lenses are a good choice, but I still might recommend starting with the 28-105. This lens is pretty good wide open and is very good at f8. It is a little slower, but may work for you. What speed film are you shooting? Do you need the lens speed? Do you need dead-on autofocus in low light?

If you're shooting faster film like 400 or more, then you may not need a faster lens. If you need great autofocus, get an F100 with a 50 1.8 or 1.4. The other benefit of the F100 is a 1/250 flash sync which is great for outdoor fill flash.

For classic b&w, smooth bokeh is important. The 28-105 looks good here, better than my 50 f1.4. I don't have the 1.8 so I can't comment on it. Nikon's two best for bokeh are probably the 45 f2.8P and 85 f1.4 - both expensive lenses but if you only got the 28-105 you'd be that much closer to one of them. If you have any interest in a wider lens, the 20 AF-D is a great lens too. Very little distortion, extremely sharp, as little problem with flare as you might believe possible in a lens this wide (sorry I sold mine!).

[Jeff82]

You make an interesting observation. The 28-105 has completely replaced wide-angle primes in my set-up. A 3.5 max aperture at wide angle focal lengths is comparable to a prime lens, and the need for fast lens speed and blurred backgrounds is usually not important to wide angle shooting.

I still really like primes at other focal lengths, and shoot mostly with a 60mm prime and a 180mm prime. But for me, a 28-105 has been an a very versatile alternative to carrying wide angle lenses, and works really well for those times when you only want to carry one lens.

Something like a 28-105 and 85 1.8 would be a nice match-up.


--Jeff