Matthew Durr Photography

What a pleasant surprise it was to see my new 35mm f/1.8 OSS arrive Christmas Eve! After a few months of waiting, this highly anticipated optic is now in my hands for testing. The 35mm f/1.8 OSS fills a crucial gap for many NEX owners looking for a fast, optically great, and truly “standard” (the field of view on APS-C is 52.5mm in 35mm-format terms) lens. It just so happens this lens is also tiny, as well as coming with optical stabilization. That last part was actually the very first thing I wanted to look at with this lens–not only can it help drop shutter speeds without motion blur and lower the ISO in stills photography, but it makes handheld video extremely smooth and free from normal handheld jitters. To test this out, I brought along this lens and the NEX-7 to a Christmas Eve celebration where my sister was performing one of her contemporary worship songs. All was recorded at f/1.8 in the 24p mode at 1/25th shutter speed, with the ISO at a low 400. The obvious parts of camera shake were user error (adjusting my grip on the camera), but even then, they aren’t as jerky as they would be with a non-stabilized lens. 1080p for best quality. 🙂

Seeing as I have only had the 35mm f/1.8 OSS for a day now, I won’t call this post a true first impressions. This is more of an “early look” of sorts. 🙂 One photo I do want to share from the lens is a shot of our Christmas tree. For a bit of originality this Christmas, I decided to print off some 8x10s of my photos over the past year to give to the family. Avid readers on this site will recognize all of these shots!

Under the Tree
35mm, ISO 400, f/2.2, 1/2 second (handheld!)

That’s all for this post guys and gals, I hope everyone reading this has a Merry Christmas or is enjoying whatever holiday they are celebrating with family and friends. The next “big” post should be that 50mm f/.95 HyperPrime. 🙂