NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8 ... well ... help

[Joao Ferreira]

First of all i would like to say sorry if there´s any thread out there already with this subject.
I bought today a Nikkor 50mm-f/1.8 lens for my Nikon D80. I am a complete rookie with this machine (one week only in my hand), so it came with the 18-70 kit lens and after reading several reviews about this lens and with a very interesting price i´ve decided to buy it.

This said, my questions are probably ridiculous for most of you but ... this is why i come to a forum - to learn with people that just like me had doubts in the past. :rolleyes:

1-You don´t touch this lens at all right? it´s autofocus and it has no zoom ring so once you put it into the D80 you never touch it again (only to remove it)?
2-There´s a ring with a scale in the back of the lens that range from 22 to 1.8 and there´s a white mark on top of it (22), does that ever changes manually or stays like that? How?
3-When Using this lens you need to move closer/far to objects since you have no zoom ring, so it´s logical that you establish a minimum range to take the pics, right? what´s that range?

Thanks to you all for your patience ...
:p

p.s - any tips would be greatly appreciated

[erichlund]

The 50mm f1.8 is an older lens that has aperture controls on the lens. For your D80, you leave the lens aperture controls locked on f22. If you move it off this setting, you cannot set aperture using the camera aperture controls. I'm not sure if this also disables auto-focus, but that would be in the manual for either the lens or the camera.

There is one other control on the lens, a focus ring. You can manually focus this lens, and there are times when you will want to. To do this, you must set the camera autofocus control on M (Normally you will have it on S until you learn more about using the camera, then you may also use C). Once you set the camera to manually focus, you must use the focus ring on the lens to focus.

Good reasons to do this including shooting in low light where focus is having difficulty, and shooting low contrast subjects, which simply don't focus very well. The third time is when it's absolutely critical to get the focus exactly right, especially with a wide open aperture (f1.8 - f2.8 or so). In these cases, you have such a shallow depth of field, that relying on the camera to focus may result on it focusing on something other than what you really intended.

[Joao Ferreira]

Thank you very much erichlund! now i see why couldn´t focus some subjects earlier on today. For example (as stupid as it may sounds) i was trying to capture the middle letters on a bottle of milk sitting in front of me, and i kept focusing the wrong letters ...
So i must use manual focus most of the time to get the best possible results with this lens right?

[erichlund]

Most of the time, you can leave the camera on autofocus. You switch to manual when you need that last little bit of critical focus. If you are taking a landscape shot at f13, depth of field is fairly large, and critical focus may not be necessary. It just depends on your subject.

[Rooz]

Thank you very much erichlund! now i see why couldn´t focus some subjects earlier on today. For example (as stupid as it may sounds) i was trying to capture the middle letters on a bottle of milk sitting in front of me, and i kept focusing the wrong letters ...
So i must use manual focus most of the time to get the best possible results with this lens right?

there is no need to use MF at all. i never manually focus the 50mm. i suspet you may be using full auto mode. try setting the camera to single AF point mode and use your central AF point for focus. the 50mm has very accurate AF even in low light so you should have no problem at all focussing on something specific as long as you set your camera up right.

[Joao Ferreira]

Thanks for all the advices ... now it´s up to me and take hundreds of photos and how i get the best results - that´s what matters in digital photos ain´t it?
Many thanks