I recently got myself a Nikon D5000 (bought for ¥7,000) and a Nikon AF-S Nikkor 35mm 1.8G DX (bought for ¥7,000). In case you’re wondering how I got the lens this cheap, the seller said there’s a speck of fungus inside the lens although I couldn’t really tell when I got it.
As for the camera, I actually wanted the much older Nikon D40 because of its smaller 6MP sensor (the D5000 is 12MP) but I couldn’t find one on Mercari.
So here are the photos from this morning’s walk shot with this D5000 + Nikkor DX 35mm 1.8 lens combination (today is very cloudy). It’s pretty impressive what kind of photos you can shoot with ¥14,000 worth of gear these days.
My iPhone SE is actually a pretty decent camera for everyday photography but I miss the days when I was shooting with 50mm lenses (like the Contax Planar 50mm/1.4, Rolleilflex Planar 50mm/1.8 and the Pentax SMC Takumar 55mm/1.8).
So I searched for a relatively inexpensive Nikon lens with a similar focal length and settled for the Nikkor DX 1.8 (it’s around 52mm equivalent for a normal full-frame camera). And then I got the body to pair it with.
The main reason I wanted the Nikkor DX 35mm, besides the focal length, was the bokeh–the quality out of focus parts of the photo. Shooting subjects up close with this lens, the background melts into a blur of shapes and colors (all photos were shot with f2.0)
Not bad at all.
