Nikon 1Nikkor 32 mm f/1.2 for Nikon 1 system

[vilva]

1Nikkor 32 is a short tele lens, which can be used as a portrait lens or a very fast general purpose lens having the FOV of an 86 mm lens on FF and a full aperture DOF corresponding to 86/3.3 on FF. On a Nikon 1 V1 at ISO 100, it can be used at the f/1.2 full aperture even in sunshine.

Presently, it is the most expensive lens for Nikon 1 but still about 30% cheaper than Voigtländer 35/1.2 Nocton for Leica M, which could be used with an M to N1 adapter as an MF lens on V1.

1Nikkor 32 is a very good lens, much better than all the other 1Nikkor lenses. It has a very robust, heavy and well finished metal body, Nano Crystal Coat to prevent lens flare, a Silent Wave Motor for AF and a very smooth fly-by-wire manual focus ring, better than any other focus ring I've ever come across. The lens is sharp corner to corner even at the full aperture so for normal shooting stopping down may be necessary only to get a deeper DOF.



Here is first a shot of my ugly mug in diffuse light using face detect AF and an IR remote. The DOF is so shallow that for real portrait shooting I'd use manual focus in order to get the focus just where I want it.



Then a crop thereof to better demonstrate the DOF. Note that this and all the other shots are in-camera JPEGS at the minimum in-camera sharpening and sharpened before down-sampling using a method which doesn't produce sharpening halos.



A selection of shots, all at the full f/1.2 aperture:





A crop from the preceding photo:








A crop:


The next shot was focused at the cathedral facade without exposure compensation and is therefore slightly underexposed at 1/16,000 s, which makes the texture better visible:


Very little flare even against a very bright background of sunlit white clouds (it seems I had accidentally toggled the aperture to f/1.6, very easy to do):


Here I focused at the very bright clouds - at f/1.6 which may or may not have saved the photo from clipping! Not much to complain about:


Here is a link to a very enthusiastic review of 1Nikkor 32: http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/2013/07/22/the-nikon-1-system-nikkor-32-1-2-lens-review/

Veijo

[LucisPictor]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

I was thinking about buying that lens as well, but to be honest, it's too expensive for my taste.

Do you know the 1.8/18.5? That is also an amazingly good lens. If you don't have it, go and get it. And it's dead cheap compared to the 32.

[vilva]