With the Birth of Alexis (my daughter, and first child), I was anxious to get my hands on a fast prime, to take photos without blinding her with the flash... The Nikon 35mm f1/8 is a fast and inexpensive "normal" lens, perfect for this type of use.

Auto focus speed is very quick and accurate (I assume this is also a function of a single focal length). The 35mm isn't a macro lens, but it does focus down to 12 inches.

As the lighting gets dimmer, this little guy really starts to shine. Opening up to f/1.8 really helps, and low light / available light photography is a joy with this lens. The 35mm is very sharp, particularly from f/2.0, but is still very good at f/1.8. Things are not all perfect, however. The lens shows a lot of chromatic aberration (particularly purple fringing). Even the in-camera JPEG processing of the D90 can't fix it all. Post production work in Photoshop can remedy the situation, but it's extra work. One does have to be careful where they point the camera, to avoid this extra work.

Here are some sample I took with this lens: