My number one criticism of the entry level Nikon dSLRs such as the D40/D40x/D60 is that they are unable to AF with certain lenses and this means there were no affordable good portrait lenses available for these cameras.
Finally, Nikon has finally addressed this with an update to their AF-S 50mm f/1.4 lens – now a G version (no aperture ring), but now with a built-in silent wave AF motor so AF works on these cameras, and a circular diaphragm for nicer bokeh (quality of blurring of the out of focus areas).
On a DX Nikon dSLR, a 50mm standard lens gives an effective focal length of 75mm which is just adequate for portraiture, although I prefer more like 100-120mm in 35mm terms, hence the reason why I love the ZD 50mm f/2 macro on my Olympus with its 2x crop factor, and the EF 85mm f/1.8 on my Canon 1DMIII with its 1.3x crop factor.
see also my comparisons on bokeh in selected portrait lenses
see dpreview.com artcle on the Nikkor AF-S 50mm f/1.4G lens
