Prime lens for Nikon D90?

What do you think is the best and yet relatively cheap prime lens for D90?

Planning to buy a Nikon D90 body and a prime lens instead of the default 18-55 and 18-105 lens. What do you think? Where is it cheap?

A good prime lens is going to be a 50 mm,

While I personally think the F 1.4 50 mm looks best for portraits the F 1.8 50mm is going to be significantly cheaper for the same effect.

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PS, prime lenses are freat for picking up sun flairs!

The cheapest prime lens for Nikon is the 50mm f1.8 - it's a cracking lens too. Ideal portrait/low light lens. Retails around £100.

If you have the skills needed to operate a fine dslr camera and understand the limitations of only having a prime on that camera then good luck. To me it would be wise to buy both. 18mm is wide enough to capture just about any area or large crowd shot - the 50 is not. 55mm is a pretty good zoom for those short shots, the 50 is about there already.

The point is, if you ever want a wide shot, indoors or out, you won't get it with the 50. Understand that I shoot Canon, I have their 50 and it's an excellent low light / portrait lens but it's very limited.

The D90 is an APS-C dSLR so to me, the best prime lens to go with it is a normal/standard lens like the 35mm that will have the same angle of view as your eyes. The 35mm f/1.8 would be the cheapest to consider and if there's a faster version, that would be the better choice.

I have a D90 and the great but inexpensive AF 50mm f/1.8D. It is a very low cost lens, but a very good one.

I prefer that over the 35mm f/1.8 (which I also used to have), as a 35mm lens introduces a bit of perspective distortion. I can back up to compensate for the cropped camera with the 50mm - I can't do anything to fix the perspective distortion of the 35mm.

Primes rock, but remember you need something for wide angle shots. But back to that in a minute. The two best options are the same for Nikon, Sony and Canon. That would be the 50mm f/1.8, or a 35mm f/1.8

The 50mm is fantastic, not too expensive, sharper than any zoom, better for low light and defocused backgrounds, but the 50mm can be a pain too. I've missed shots because it wasn't wide enough for a particular setting. Same for the 35mm but less so.

On the downside, if you go wider than 35mm and you want a large aperture, the price starts to climb fast. So while the 18-55 is great on the wide end, the aperture is a bit pokey at f/3.5 but you can't have it all. If the 18-55 isn't all that much, just get it with the body. If you want to skip it for now, no worries, there are millions of them floating around, and they are cheap so you can always get one later.

Prices for the primes are almost identical from all the trusted sellers like Amazon, best buy, B and H, Adorama, so just go with whatever you are comfortable with. If a seller has it for a lot less than everyone else be careful it could be a scam.