Nikon 40mm lens

[lamwayne]

After looking through the first set again, the rays and the lionfish are close to what I had in mind. Big enough that you'd have to back up too much with the 60 and lose some color and sharpness to the water column.
The shot with the reef in the background illustrates the exact same issue I have with the 60. The macros don't do wider shots well because the background blurs, but not enough to be artistic. On land, you get bokeh. Underwater, you get fuzzy looking coral. It definitely seems to need a blue water background.

I agree with you Larry. Some shots has very distracting background because I did not choose the background carefully. Those bokeh of sand is just utterly disgusting. Having said that, when awful bokeh is concerned, I find 40mm produces less of an sore eye (compare to the 60mm).

The primary reason I got the 40mm is to shoot medium size subject up to about 1 foot long but allow me to get close at time requires. Whether it works on larger subjects will depend on the clarity of the water.

 

[lamwayne]

Thanks again for the helpful insight Wayne,

....I guess it's time to buy and experiment

You will love the 40mm. I may also go to Anilao again in May.

 

[Magrone]

The 40mm arrived today and good news; no vignetting in the 60mm/67mm thread port. As expected The auto focus is indeed a little bit slower than the 105 VR BUT autofocus in low light seems to perform much better than the 105mm; less hunting. So far this seems to be an excellent lens for my purposes. Now I just need to get it underwater.

 

[Magrone]

Happy so far with the lens. Seems to perform well on night dives.

 

[Larry C]

Did you have it wide open? The DOF is way shallow on that shot. Post more as you get them. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Magrone]

Did you have it wide open? The DOF is way shallow on that shot. Post more as you get them. Thanks for sharing.

F10 was chosen for effect. I'll most likely be using this lens a lot when I head to Anilao in three weeks. More to follow.

 

[Magrone]

Here are some more examples from yesterday's dive with the 40mm behind the Zen 100mm mini dome. Not a lot of action on the dive, so I tried to get a little creative. The CFWA shots are uncropped, the rest were treated to a more appropriate crop + edit.

 

[Magrone]

Ok upon further testing of this lens I can see that is mostly useful for special purposes, such as snooting and the occasional larger reef fish.... and this is exactly why I bought it. For snooting I think this a great lens, especially if you know the size of the critters you will encounter before the dive. Good for small octopus (Mimic etc), cuttlefish, waspfish, Devil Scorpionfish ie your typical Lembeh muck slope dive. Not so great for smaller Nudis and such . As a go-to lens this does not hit the mark for most things like the 60mm does. And to almost guarantee I have something to shoot during the dive I would rather shoot with the 105 + detachable wet diopter. Though the lens performs very well even in low light, and in my opinion performs MUCH better than the Tokina 35mm, close focusing alternative.Here are some pics from Anilao The vignetting on the on the anemone shot was due to a +5 diopter attached which I didn't think hurt the image:

 

[Larry C]

Nice. It did really well on the slightly larger subjects, like the Octopus and Cuttlefish pair. I think that's where my 60mm falls down the most, slightly larger subjects where you'd like the background a little sharper. I have to stop it down too much to get good DOF, then the subject is poorly lit.

 

[tammarak]

Thank you for posting some of your photos. We have been considering a 40mm for our D7000 also and this settles it, we are getting one!