The 40mm f/2 in the Museum

The 40mm f/2 is one Nikon's lighter, smaller and cheaper options for the Nikon Z system. I wrote about it in this blog before. Its only drawback turned out to be that the 50mm f/1.8 is so much better. But it is also more bulky. The 40mm is rather in the style of the old nifty-fifties, compact and affordable. So it makes a great walk-around lens for anybody who wants to stay light. 

Today, I took it to a museum.

It turned out well. 

Most museums these days are lit up enough for f/4 and ISO1600 or below. For a better object isolation, f/2 is available. But the lens improves a lot at f/4. So I take that whenever possible. In good light and when object isolation is not needed, f/5.6 is the way to go. After all, this is a 40mm lens and it should show something of the surrounding scene.

In fact, you can get nice object separation and pleasant background even at f/5.6 if you are close enough, as you see in the picture above. And f/2.8 may fail to blur the background as you can study in the first image on this page. The distance to the object matters more than the aperture.

This is a photo of a painting showing Napoleon on his retreat from Russia where he left the army alone. It is, like almost all pictures here, on ISO1600. In this case, 1/20 was necessary. The onboard IBIS helps a lot.

Architectural shots are possible too. I think 40mm works well if the scene is narrow. It is not a wide angle lens.

The beauty of the lens is really that it makes a very light combination with my Z5. Let us see how long I can neglect the fact that the 50mm f/1.8 is better.

For your information, all images on this page are edited, many are cropped. I am unable to achieve the results I want out-of-camera. And actually, editing is part of the fun.