I was in the market for a good prime lens but didn´t want to spend too much for my first one so I decided to go with this one. At first, I was skeptical as it was cheap, not a AF-S lens, material seems light and cheap, and didn´t seem very durable.

It wasn´t till I started using it and realized its potential. This is a great lens. Shoots very crisp images with a nice blur effect in the background which helps bring your attention to the subject of the picture. It helps bring out the atmosphere of the subject matter in your photos without losing much of the image and color. It´s a great lens during events, especially in a low-light environment and also a great lens for portraits and landscape. With a wide range of F-stops from 1.8 to 22, you have a wide variety of aperture to choose from to adapt to your surroundings. I now mostly use this lens for events and portraits.

The only con I have with this lens is that it´s a AF lens and is not compatible with the new D3100/D5100, as well as the D3000 and D5000. I wouldn´t recommend this to beginners who are using these new bodies since you have to manually focus your images. I use it on my D3100 and it takes several shots for you to get the focus right. It´s also quite noisy when it auto-focuses on a compatible body such as the D90/D7000 and up. I would recommend the new 50mm 1.8G Lens for beginners since that is a AF-S lens and is very quiet when focusing. It´s also compatible with all Nikon DSLRs.

Other than those cons, this is a great lens for beginners and professionals alike. I would highly recommend you to pick this up since it´s quite affordable and takes excellent pictures.

All of my sample pictures were taken with a D3100 body.

Awesome...love it. Specially the blur background effect.

I am using this lens for almost 8 months now.
I really like how this light-weighted prime lens produce an excellent picture quality, the DoF and bokeh but the downside of this lens is that it is only capable of manual focusing on motor-less DX bodies like D40/D40x/D60/D3000/D3100/D5000/D5100.
I use Nikon D3000 and it works fine for now. I use it mainly for photographing still objects, nature and landscape.
Worth the cash for a second lens.

I used this for my husband´s ARMY Softball game and I am of no means a pro. The focal stop allowed for great action pictures. I was able to capture the batter´s bat contacting with the ball! I definitely recommend this lense!!! :)

I used this lens on a wedding I shot earlier this month. The bokeh, and sharpness are amazing. This lens autofocuses fast on my D7000. Great quality lens with no distortion. This lens is a keeper.

Excellent portrait and travel lens for the price. The only drawback is that it does not autofocus - is this the norm for this lens when used with a D7000?

Thought the lens would be workable,not so. Rough fit attaching to bayonet mount on my D80,I own four other nikon lenses and never had a problem, tried three times always difficult, I´m scared the lens will damage the recieving end of cameras CPU mount , I upgrade my cameras every couple of years, My first nikon was an EM . I bought the lens in St Martens DA and I live in Canada and the cost of shipping it back/refund is not cost effective. A waste of $140.00CAN

This is a great lens for portraits. I also like to use extention tubes with it for some real close up work.

Great lens for low light situations. Lock 22 and the camera will perform all functions except Auto Focus. Lens must be manually focused on the D3100, D5100 cameras and any others that requires AF-S lenses. Great for low light situations. Can even take pictures with only candlelight and with shutter speeds sufficient to hand hold the camera.