about the SB400

it is small, neat , easy to carry around, light, can bounce, and most important does not run down the inhouse battery of the camera.

works great as fill flash and as stated you can bounce off the ceiling or with a flash card.

quicker rechage time than the oncamera flash, with just two AA batteries, and they last forever.

Also it is kind of stealthy, and, there are ways around the portrait bounce, if you really want to do portrait bounce flash,

It allows you go around taking pictures without people staring at you.

However, after saying all that, Mike Gunter is spot on, there will come the day when you will want the SB700.

Get the SB400, and later on when the funds come along, get the SB700, you will find there are times when you will prefer one over the other, just like having different lenses for different shooting situations.

http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=1781
http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=1201
http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=2318
http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=1944
http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=327
http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=3328

Get it. Its our most reccomended lens ;)

Hi,

Money's always an object, but a little more buys a lot more. An SB700 will give you a lot more flash than an SB400. The SB400 is just a tad more than your built in flash, and the SB700 will do a lot more for you. You'll discover side bounce is as important as 'up' bounce, and getting a cord to take the flash off camera is terribly important too.

I'm a flash-alcoholic and admit it, using many indoors and outdoors for my shots, I have 4-SB900s and 2-SB800s and most of them in my shots. Once you use Nikon's Creative Lighting System (CLS) you'll want to explore more flash as well as more lenses.

Using a stand with a remote flash can be as useful (or more so) than a reflector.

All this is to say that an SB700 will be a better start than an SB400 and wiser money spent.

As for the f1.8 35mm, I have it and use it a lot, too.

My best,

Mike

+1 on 35. I have the 35 and 50 and LOVE the 35: It focuses precisely and way faster on D7000 and is great working distance for indoors and with young kids. It is as sharp as any other lens I have, wonderful colors, and I see no chromatic abheration when I pixel peep. I typically keep it on the camera when going to dinner parties; the 50 on when going to the beach or the park. That said, 40DX is a Macro lens so if I were buying now, I'd check it out.

I love this lens. Should there be any trace of doubt left, I wish to make that vanish :) BTW for the price of this thing you can't really go wrong.

I've used this lens extensively, especially for street photography, it's great for showing a situation. Not so great for portraits, but you have your 50mm for that. The sharpness is simply amazing. These 3 pictures were all taken with the 35mm 1.8 on my D90:

http://bramberkienfotografie.nl/img/_DSC6482_3.jpg
http://bramberkienfotografie.nl/img/_DSC6379_3.jpg
http://bramberkienfotografie.nl/img/_DSC6359_3.jpg

However! The biggest surprise for me personally came when I bought my D700 a couple of weeks back. It's a full-frame camera as you may know, and since the 35 1.8 is a DX lens, it shouldn't perform as well on FX. Horse crap. I absolutely love this lens on my D700. The sharpness may not be as great as on DX and when you stop down the lens, there's heavy vignetting. Still, I think it performs great, especially considering the price and considering the alternatives. 35mm AF-S FX lens is like 1500 euros here. That's ten times the price, and like 3 times the size and weight. The field of view on FX allows me to get really close to the action. I walked around a huge fun fair for a whole week recently, took like 1500 pics with this lens on my D700, I'm sold.

So will you be :)

Thanks for the advice everyone, seems like a no-brainer then, time to go shopping :)

I've also been strongly advised by a photography friend (albeit one that LOVES to spend other peoples money on kit!) that I ought to consider getting a flash, so I was thinking (based on Ken Rockwell's fantastic site & advice) to get the SB-400, sound like a sensible purchase? (based on the sort of photography described in my original post)

+1 on the 35mm f/1.8.

Definitely a lens worth buying. It's still not wide enough in my opinion, but Nikon doesn't make a lens that's wider, cheaper or sharper than the 35mm 1.8.

Welcome to the forums and remember to post your photos too.

It's a little gem. I have a 300mm f2.8 which is razor sharp and I have to admit that the 35mm 1.8 is just as sharp.

close your eyes,

get it,

fantastic indoors, and outdoors,

you will not regret buying it,
everything that is said above and more,

I have and use both the 50mm 1.8 and the 35mm 1,8 with my D7000.

you will love it.

I think you'll love the 35, as most people who have it seem to love it. On a DX camera its FOV is close to the FOV of a 50 on an FX or a film camera. I use mine quite a lot, and I think it should do for you want you are looking for.

The 35mm 1.8G DX prime lens is a amazing little lens. It's ultra sharp wide-open(actually one of the sharpest lenses wide-open). It's cheap, and gives a 35mm Full-Frame field of view of about 52mm, whereas the 50 1.8D gives a field of view about 75mm on a APS-C crop sensor body(DX). This crop factor in DX makes the 50mm more of a telephoto and the 35mm a normal prime, hence why Nikon made the 35mm DX prime.

A Full-Frame FX DSLR(like the D700 or D3s/D3x) doesn't have a crop factor because it has an APS sensor that's 1.5x larger than it's APS-C counterpart(DX). Just remember to times the focal length by 1.5 to get actual focal length measurements on your D7000.

That being said, the 35mm 1.8G DX lens is a much better lens for chasing kids around and will quickly become your fave.

Hi

A bit of background - I'm pretty new to photography, not really looking to do it professionally or anything, I just picked up a half decent camera for taking family snaps, holidays, pictures of the kids etc... slowly building up some kit to suit the sort of pictures i'm taking or want to take and exploring the whole thing.

Currently I have a D7000, nikon 18-55mm lens (which came with my old D40) a nikon 55-300mm, and a 50mm f1.8D The 50 is the newest addition and is probably my favourite one to use, but, while i'm running around in the garden or at the park, or round the house with my 5 year old, i'm finding that the field of view is a bit too narrow, because i'm usually quite close to her, so to get to the point of this post do you think the 35mm 1.8G will solve that problem?

It's not particularly expensive, and since I love the 50mm so much i'm sure it'll do the trick but I thought i'd seek some advice from those that know before I part with some cash (it's a shame that none of my photography friends have a 35mm I can borrow!)

I've read things comparing these lenses but that's not really what i'm worried about, I just want to get an idea of how well it's going to work in the context of how i'll be using it.

Thanks for reading and any help or advice is much appreciated