Monthly Archives: June 2018

Two fine 85s

Nikon lenses

As good as it gets.

Recent articles here comparing the AF/AFD era autofocus Nikons, like the 20mm and the 50mm/1.8, confirm that the AF/AFD ‘plastic fantastic’ lenses certainly use a lot of plastic, but fantastic they are not. The old ‘metal era’ lenses outperform the AF ones easily, and are far better constructed in addition.

With the 85mm f/1.8 Nikons, the story is a little different.


85mm f/1.8 MF, 1969 vintage and the AFD version made in 1997. The AF takes a 62mm filter and hood,
not the usual 52mm HN-7 for the MF.

Previous experience with the AFD optic showed it to be quite special from f/2 down, but I was surprised to see how much better it was compared with the older MF lens, in which I had installed a CPU. Something was wrong. I was using the focus confirmation light in the Nikon D700 to determine focus, and it was clear that the MF lens was not at best focus with the viewfinder LED lit. So off to the bookshelf, which disclosed that the MF was focusing slightly in front of the target. An angled shot confirmed my suspicion:


Green line is where I focused. Red line is sharpest point.

The MF was not properly collimated. Refer back to a piece I wrote six years ago on how to collimate MF Nikons fitted with an aftermarket CPU. One of the functions of the CPU is that the point at which the body’s focus confirmation light illuminates can be shifted back or forward, eight small steps in each direction. One shift using the ’20’ function and this is what I got:


Green line (LED illuminated) and red line (sharpest point) now coincide.

This quick tweak now permitted proper comparison of the performance of the MF and AF lenses.

In the image pairs below the image from the MF lens is at the left:




At f/1.8.


At f/2.8.


At f/4


At f/5.6


Rendering of out-of-focus areas is similar, with that of the MF optic marginally preferable to my eyes. Both lenses are fully usable at f/1.8, a tribute to Nikon’s designers.

It’s clear that the MF lens is superior through f/2.8 after which differences are slight. The traditional warmer tones of the MF lenses are again notable here.

So the AFD lens is really good, and my studio image of my son Winston taken in 2012 testifies loudly to that fact:


Winston in his karate outfit. D700, 85/1.8 AFD Nikkor, two Novatron heads.

Either optic is a wonderful addition to any snapper’s arsenal. The MF lens is slower in use but outstanding in every way, while the AF version excels in the studio where critical focus on the eyes is made easy by the autofocus function.

Nikon F100

Film, Nikon bodies

Culmination of a film odyssey.

For an index of all my Film related articles, click here.

Spurred on by a friend who is an enthusiastic film user, I determined that a logical approach to finding the right combination of film hardware, services and EXIF software was called for. The market is bursting to the seams with lightly used film cameras available at scrap prices and the renaissance enjoyed by film itself is reflected in the number of labs offering processing and scanning services along with a growing number of emulsions after the nadir of a few years ago.


My film body odyssey – Nikon FE, N90S and F100.

Hardware:

The choice of brand was simple. I have some two dozen F-mount Nikkor lenses, mostly manual focus with AI conversions and chips installed by me. A few are newer AF optics though as recent pieces here have shown, the old lenses are generally superior to the more recent ones, and at lower cost.

Bodies are insanely cheap and there is no earthly reason to save a few dollars by buying a beater, when mint examples can be had for little more. The early metered bodies from the FE/FM series, known for their toughness, can be found for around $100 so I started with a Nikon FE, a small and ergonomically superb offering, far more robust than contemporary Leicas with their rangefinders fading and all sorts of alignment issues, along with rotting rubber shutter blinds where Nikon uses titanium. And at 10% of the cost of those Leicas, what’s not to like? Mine ran me $100 plus $30 for a better focus screen. The FE falls naturally to hand and I had a blast using it but I found that the absence of a focus confirmation LED in the finder was a feature sorely missed by my aging eyes. Use a lens f/2.8 or slower, even with the improved FM3 focus screen installed, I was never quite sure critical focus had been established and was often sawing the focus collar back and forth to get there.

Thus the next step was to find a Nikon film body with autofocus which, with a manual Nikkor fitted, conferred the advantage of that confirmation light. Along came a Nikon N90s, another body renowned for its durability and costing a whopping $50 in the original box, no less. Heavier than the FE owing to the focus and film advance/rewind motor, the body is a delight to use with AF Nikons or unchipped MF ones, but the aftermarket chips installed by me on every one of my manual focus Nikons refuse to communicate with the body’s exposure meter and are thus useless. With AF Nikkors the body works perfectly. The only known issue is a tendency for the chintzy coating on the back to degrade and get sticky, but my body came with that removed, exposing the black plastic underneath. Isopropyl alcohol is the indicated solvent here and the result looks fine, matching the finish of the rest of the body.

So a better mousetrap was called for and it came along in the guise of the Nikon F100, meaning the $200 I splashed out wildly on the mint body and high capacity battery grip was financed by the proceeds of sale of the FE, the N90S and the F100’s battery grip which does little for this occasional snapper other than adding needless weight and bulk.

The F100 is superb in every way. The body takes four AA batteries like the N90s, disposes controls in a manner almost identical to those on my favorite digital body, the D700 and comes with an eyepiece diopter adjuster built in which is a boon for non-stock eyesight. With four AA cells installed in the body holder the external battery holder with its 6 AA batteries can be dispensed with leaving a body barely heavier than the N90S. Unlike with the FE and N90s you cannot change the focus screen, but you do not need to. The focus confirmation light works perfectly. The apertures of my MF Nikkors are correctly registered by the metering system with aperture priority exposure automation. That’s a huge deal as I have many and they are all here to stay. And the F100 focuses AF Nikkors very fast. Weaknesses? Rumored to be very tough on batteries, but no problem for a ‘one film a week’ guy, plus they are common and inexpensive AAs. The earlier bodies had a fragile rewind fork – you can identify it easily as it’s pointed. If your body’s s/n is greater than 21673xx you will find that the spigots on the rewind fork are now squared, not pointed, and much more robust. (The s/n is engraved black on black underneath the bayonet mount at the base). Finally, the perfect body, though the sensual pleasure of the FE’s manual film advance is gone.

In addition to the fragile rewind fork on earlier bodies (unlikely to be an issue with lightly used bodies), the only other issue with the F100 I have noted on chat boards is with the automated start and rewind of the film.

It appears that if you set Custom Settings to thread the film when the door is closed, and to rewind it after the last shot, the system can fail and start rewind part way through the roll. I believe the mechanism Nikon uses to determine when to start automated rewind is simply to measure the current demand of the advance motor. When the film is at the end, the current demand spikes and the advance motor goes into reverse and commences rewind. But a like current demand – triggering a false ‘end of film’ indication – can occur with a stiff cassette spool and/or a tight felt trap, which would simulate the ‘end of roll’ condition part way through the roll

Custom Settings are set thus:

The two Custom Settings for automated film loading and rewind are 8 and 1, respectively:

You want to make sure these are both set to ‘0’, the default setting, thus defeating the automation.

To manually commence rewinding the film at the end of the roll you simultaneously depress the ‘BKT’ (top left) and the ‘+/-‘ buttons (top right). (In the later D700 this button pair formats the CF storage card. Neat.) Each is marked with a red symbol.

The other Custom Setting to note concerns the use of the lens’s aperture ring to set aperture rather than using the front top wheel (sub-command dial), custom setting #22:

This is essential to enable aperture ring control for my MF chipped Nikkors as I cannot control the setting of the aperture using the sub-command dial, and as I also much prefer to use the lens’s aperture ring. So my Custom Setting #22 is set to ‘1’ and all my old lenses work properly.



By the time the F100 was made, Nikon’s design layout was pretty much firmed up.
The much later D700 is on the left.

Processing and scanning:

No one in his right mind wants film strips returned. A high quality scan of the processed film is what is called for and as mass scanner quality has peaked, holding on to film strips in the hope of better scans down the road is a quixotic approach. After a couple of false starts with labs in California, I found that Sharpprints.com, in Wisconsin of all places, was just the ticket. Excellent processing with high attendant volume assures fresh chemicals, complemented with high definition scans from their Noritsu scanner. Further, downloads are available fast and there are no downloading issues. And they are almost 40% cheaper than the uncaring and unresponsive coastal labs – $14 versus $22.50 a roll. The limitation is that this lab only processes color film requiring C41 chemicals (color negative emulsions), and does not process E6 color slide stock. They also process TriX and other monochrome film in Kodak HC110 developer.

EXIF data:

Other than telling you the scanner manufacturer’s name, no EXIF data is present on scanned film files. I find such data to be essential as I tend to search for images in my catalog by camera body and lens used. Thus I resort to a $10 application named ‘EXIF Editor’, available in the Apple OS X App Store.

It’s a tad clunky but can be integrated into LR for the roundtrip in Lightroom->Preferences->External Editing:


EXIF Editor set as an external editing option.

Batteries:

The F100 has something of a reputation as a battery eater. My body came with the auxiliary battery holder which holds 6 AA batteries rather than the 4 in the body’s handgrip. The latter must be removed when the auxiliary MB-15 holder is attached – see the first image in this article. The battery holder appears to add 40% capacity based on Nikon’s data:


Note the greatly increased power draw with big, long lenses
like the 80-200 f/2.8 AFD zoom – lower section, above.

I immediately sold my battery holder ($50) as it adds weight and bulk out of proportion to its sole utility value which is the addition of a vertical shutter release. You don’t need it. Further, cheap lithium batteries are now abundantly available – I paid $1.50 per cell at Amazon, and the table above suggests no one needs the external holder. If you must change batteries fast, new in-body Nikon MS-12 AA battery holders remain available for under $25 – in fact I had to buy one as it was missing from my body. Simple pre-load one with batteries of your choice and keep it in your pocket.

* * * * *

The results of this discovery process:

  • Three business days from mailing to availability of high quality downloadable scans.
  • The charm of using analog film in a digital world, with all the attendant benefits and challenges.
  • Properly EXIF indexed data files in my Lightroom catalog.
  • Negligible financial outlay.

More film, another lab

Film, Photographs

Trust is the issue.

For an index of all my Film related articles, click here.

I mentioned that after the debacle with the first processing lab I tried that I had sought out two more which offered processing, high quality scanning and online download of the scanned images.

The first I tried was Sharprints.com in Wisconsin, and it proved to be excellent. Fast, meaning 3.5 business days from mailing to download, quality work and all promises met. Bare bones, maybe, but that’s all I need. That and promises made being kept. Click the link for more details.

The other lab I tried, ProPhoto.com in Irvine, CA came with the usual flakiness associated with large coastal city operations, just like the execrable TheDarkroom.com, also in the Golden State. Emails were not replied to, statements that the download was ready were false, calls resulted in infinite hold times and the process took 4.5 business days, which is mystifying given that Irvine, CA is but 384 miles from my home whereas Eau Claire, WI is 1,712 miles distant. Based on comparative performance and honesty and clarity of communications, I recommend Sharpprints.com in WI for film processing, scanning and download. Price is also a factor – $14 for the WI lab, $22.50 for the one in CA. One roll of Kodak Ektar 100 was the test in each case.

Here are some snaps from the latest film foray, in downtown Phoenix. Hardware was again the Nikon FE with the 43-86mm f/3.5 Zoom Nikkor:

A tale of two fifties

Nikon lenses

Plastic fantastic and the Real Thing.


The AF on the left, the Real Thing on the right. 5.6 oz with AF against 7.2 oz without.

There really is no earthly reason why lenses encased in plastic or resins should be any worse than their metal enshrouded predecessors. On impact plastic is more likely to ‘give’ than dent, and the attendant benefits of light weight and durability are non trivial. Plastic bodies get glossy with wear, whether on a camera or lens, but retain their black finish, unlike plated or anodized metal. And nearly all of today’s Nikons use tough and light crinkle finish resins in the G series optics which are optically the best there is at any price. I own one of these, the Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G AF-S DX lens, a 50mm FFE for the APS-C Nikon D2x, and it is excellent optically and durable mechanically. It shows barrel wear in an understated manner. And look at any old, maltreated metal era Nikon with a scalloped focusing ring where the black anodizing has worn off and you have something really ugly on your hands.


It does not get much uglier than this.

But show me an unsullied original of that metal era wonder and I will show you mechanical beauty from an era when lens design and execution reached new peaks, peaks largely emanating from Nippon Kogaku, Tokyo.

The 50mm AF (pre-D) Nikon shown above is a product of the 1990s and I can only think times must have been especially hard at the factory in Tokyo. The design of the plastic barrel is simply awful, devoid of ergonomics or artifice, and Nikon has abandoned its gorgeous engraving of numbers on the lens to screen printed paint, which eventually simply rubs off. This design awfulness extends to many lenses in the AF/AFD era, all using the competent if somewhat Rube Goldberg ‘screwdriver’ design to confer autofocus via a coupling in the bayonet mount. Many late film era and better grade digital bodies from Nikon provide this capability. (The later AFD lens variants are optically identical but add a distance reporting CPU for better operation with selected Nikon flashguns).

No, there really is no excusing the sheer awfulness of the looks of the AF/AFD 50mm Nikkor. Just one look – better still a feel – of the metal era 50mm f/2 Nikon HC lens (HC means six elements, multicoated; the earlier single coated version was simply ‘H’) tells you how a lens should be made, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. How do they compare optically?

Well, sad to relate the newer lens is optically worse in every regard at every aperture, center or corner. It shows high chromatic aberration fully open (color fringing) where the old lens shows none, it hotspots the center of the image below f/4 and the micro-contrast which the older lens delivers in abundance is simply missing in the AF lens.

But by all means buy the AF if AF is what you need. The very high standards of the metal era optic may not be equalled but we are talking state-of-the-art here, even by today’s standards. If the Leica Summicron is the reference for all 50mm lenses, then the 50mm f/2 Nikon HC more than gives it a run for the money. The AF/AFD will deliver decent results and at under $70 for a mint example is hardly a material economic drain. But, goodness, it feels awful to use. And using an ugly tool has never improved my images.


The 50’s era Summicron. Beauty and performance.

While there is nothing to choose between the optical performance of the 50mm Nikkor and Summicron of the era – though the Summicron will run you ten times as much as the Nikon on the used market – the Leitz lens comes with one nice plus. The finish is chrome plating and incredibly tough. I have never seen one worn through to the underlying brass. By contrast, the thin anodizing on the Nikon wears easily, leading to the ugly result shown above.