Nikon 1 Nikkor 32mm f/1.2

This Nikon 1 NIKKOR 32mm f/1.2 lens is the fastest 1 NIKKOR lens now available. This medium telephoto lens has a focal length of 32mm, (86mm in 35mm format). Its extremely large maximum aperture of f/1.2 delivers exceptional with superb background blur.

This lens is the first of the 1 NIKKOR line which includes Nano Crystal Coat technology to reduce flare and ghosting. A Silent Wave Motor is also included to give quiet focussing operation. The lens also enables shooting with a very shallow depth of field and has a focus ring for accurate fine tuning in manual priority autofocus mode.

Many people love these types of lenses for several reasons. The extremely large aperture will give an extremely thin depth of field and this will require very accurate focussing, but will give a superb emphasis on the subject. The background can be really blurred out with excellent bokeh.

This lens will also be great for low light situations and available light photography.

Here are some of the available lenses for the Nikon 1 system.

Specifications

• Nikon 1 mount lens
• Focal length, 32 mm
• Maximum aperture, f/1.2
• Minimum aperture, f/16
• Lens construction, 9 elements in 7 groups
• Nano Crystal coatings
• Angle of view, 28°
• Minimum focus distance, 0.45 m, 1.48 ft, from focal plane
• Maximum reproduction ratio, 0.08x
• Diaphragm blades, 7 with rounded diaphragm opening
• Diaphragm fully automatic
• Aperture range, f/1.2 – f/16
• Filter size, 52 mm, P=0.75 mm
• Dimensions, 65.5 mm diameter x 47 mm (distance from camera lens mount flange)
• Weight, 235 g, 8.3 oz

What is the most important component in your photography. To many people they would reply the camera or the lens but are they correct.

From my perspective many of the current cameras are very similar in image quality, admittedly in the Nikon range which I use, there are the FX and DX range of cameras where the FX cameras have a better low light capability but in my opinion the difference is relatively small and the cost is great. The larger sensor, FX  cameras also have generally more pixels with the idea that that more pixels will let you print larger images to put on your wall. But again the difference is still quite small. I have printed an image which I captured in Japan and have had the image printed to 1 meter wide and many people have commented how excellent the image is, this image was actually captured on a 4 MPixel Nikon D2H camera which is now quite a few years old, now we have cameras of 36 MPixels.

This image of the Tokyo Shinjuku Gyoen Gardens in Japan is shown below.

Tokyo Shinjuku Gyoen Gardens, Japan

There are many factors in the choice of lenses, a few as follows:

• Focal length
• Aperture
• Focussing speed
• Image quality.

The image above was captured with a high quality Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8 AF-S DX lens.

The settings used for the above image was f/4.5, 17mm, ISO200 and 1/1,250 second. I believe that this image would have been just as good if I had used a cheaper lens and stopped down the lens by another couple of stops.

One of the most important aspects of any image is not the equipment but the lighting. For the above image the lighting was very subdued as a result of the  clouds with a small break in the clouds to enhance the lighting of the scene.

High quality equipment will cost you a substantial amount of money but good lighting in a landscape will not cost you anything, it will only cost you the time in waiting for the best light to occur.

Christmas Tweety Bird

I have been asked a few times how I was able to do the above image which I put up on my Twitter account at Christmas time, with the Christmas cap on the noisy minor bird.

It is really quite easy if you have photo processing software which enables you to work with layers. In this example I used Photoshop for the image processing.

As an example I will explain in a tutorial how I combined the two images shown below to form the final composite image.

Sunset

I used the above sunset image as the background image and did a basic noise reduction using Noiseware Pro. I really like Noiseware Pro as my noise reduction software. This image was captured in my backyard at home and I did a basic crop of the image to suite the composition.

Magpie Geese

The above image of the Magpie Geese was captured in the Northern Territory, Australia and was the main element of the composition in the image.

With this Magpie Geese image  image, I carried out the following basic steps:

• A basic noise reduction on the image.
• A selection of the sky using colour selection to ensure that the edges of the birds feathers were finely selected.
• Once the area is selected that you want to delete, clear the background sky area.
• Give the Magpie image a slight sharpening.

• Load both images into the software in separate layers.
• Place the Magpie Geese image on top of the background image.
• Adjust the brightness, contrast, vibrance , saturation and any other adjustment you like to give a final of each layer separately.
• Once you are happy with the final image merge the two layers into one.
• Now the image is completed.

Composite Image of Sunset and Magpie Geese