Monthly Archives: February 2012

ThinkTank Retrospective 10 bag

Hardware

Someone has been thinking here.

If, like me, you are a wimp who feels sorry for himself when carrying weight is involved, give the ThinkTank Retrospective line of camera bags a thought.

Background:

I wanted to be able to carry a reasonably versatile Nikon D700 outfit with a minimum of pain. The idea is that the body with the 16-35mm zoom (no toy, when it comes to size) goes in with the lens pointed vertically downwards, ready to be removed and prepared for action without messing with caps and lens mounting. I looked at all the big name bags – marques like Lowepro and Domke – and found that there really was nothing that recognized that this is the way most itinerant photographers work. You know, those of us who walk or ride a bike with our gear about us.

Click the image for the ThinkTank site.

Then I chanced upon something designed with the modern DSLR user in mind, from a company named ThinkTank. It fulfilled several of my requirements. The camera and lens combination goes in as described, there is room for another four lenses without cramming, it looks nothing like a camera bag, and has a truly broad strap and shoulder pad to spread the load. I did not want closure zippers, and the Retrospective 10 uses a large Velcro flap, with the option of disabling the Velcro for a loose flap and zero noise. It’s at this point that you start to realize that the designers have done some serious thinking.

Attention to detail. Velcro disabling flaps and business card holder.

Unexpected benefits include a zippered, interior pocket which will accommodate an iPad and a rain cover which slips on from the front, wrapping around the base then in towards your body, so as not to interfere with the shoulder strap. There’s also a regular handle for carrying like a suitcase. The iPad will fit more easily in either outside pocket – the Velcroed one in front or the zippered one next to your body; it’s a tight fit in the internal one, but will fit and the zipper can be closed. So there are no fewer than three iPad pockets! There is a clear plastic Velcro pocket inside the front flap to hold a handful of business cards.

Border terrier for size. The thinner strap is a small carrying handle.

In use.

D700 with 16-35mm fitted, 85mm and 300mm below, hidden area under top of D700 for two more lenses. iPad at right in zippered pocket.The blue tape top left retains the compact weatherproof cover.The 16-35mm zoom on the D700 is resting on its mounted lens hood. There’s a small, leather, embossed maker’s label sewn to the outside fabric, but it’s on the body side and invisible in use. Phew!

There are small open flaps top and bottom and a Velcroed one at left on the front. There are no tripod straps, and I doubt the bag would accommodate a full size DSLR like a Nikon D3 or D4/EOS 1D/D700 or 5D with battery grip plus many lenses. There are two larger sizes, the 20 and 30, for those. Indeed, if your idea of a fun time is an 85mm f/1.4 rather than my modest f/1.8, or a 200mm f/2 in lieu of my f/4, or you like huge 70-200 f/2.8 primes or even longer ‘pro’ zooms, then you should look at the larger ThinkTank sizes. And give Charles Atlas my regards when you hump all this weight to the site.

Broad strap and pad spread the weight.

The manufacturer’s site states:

“Think Tank Photo was started in January 2005 by two designers, Doug Murdoch and Mike Sturm, and two photographers, Deanne Fitzmaurice and Kurt Rogers. Deanne Fitzmaurice won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for photojournalism in 2005.”

It shows. And be sure to check out Deanne Fitzmaurice’s work in the link above.

In use:

The material and construction quality are excellent, and the bag works well in practice. I took it on a walk around San Francisco yesterday evening, and found that it worked best with the bag slung diagonally across my chest bandolier style, hanging at my left, with the D700 slung over the left shoulder, just above the bag. The Upstrap on the D700 is quite exceptionally resistant to slipping and, should it slip, the camera will land on top of the bag. In this way weight is distributed across both shoulders. Carrying a body/lens combination that heavy and bulky around your neck for any period of time not only invites ridicule, it will also drive up chiropractor bills. The shoulder pad slides on the strap which is much appreciated.

Here’s a couple of late evening snaps from that outing:

Yuerba Buena at night. D700, 16-35mm @ 24mm, ISO 1600.

Bagpiper, Pine Street at Sansome. D700, 85mm f/1.8D at f/1.8, ISO 1250.

My ‘standard’ lens is the 16-35 zoom, a range consonant with my brain’s sweet spot. When removed it’s simply dropped in the large, vacant central space and one of the other lenses is mounted on the body. I don’t bother with front lens caps, using only rear ones to protect the vulnerable aperture stop down lever. The side pockets could hold a small flashgun or a couple of granola bars, but are too slim for a bottle of water. That’s where a bike or your local pub comes in handy.

Conclusion:

The color and looks are very discreet, and the bag is recommended. It comes with a no-questions-asked lifetime warranty which was clearly not written by a schmuck. People who take responsibility for their products deserve to succeed.

* * * * *

Were I to return to my hiking days, I would use the Lowepro AW Trekker, which is a backpack design, with sternum strap and tripod holder. It will accommodate more gear than the ThinkTank but at a cost – gear takes far longer to deploy and you really must set the bag down on a flat surface to remove or replace components, otherwise expensive crashing sounds will ensue. It too, is a fine product, well made for long term use, and also comes with a weatherproof cover. It uses two long zippers for the top cover; these are hard to avoid in backpack designs.

The Lowepro AW Trekker.

D&G

Photography

Vogue ad.

I enjoy Vogue magazine for its advertising. The writing is nothing to well, write home about, and when you get issues glorifying the refined tastes of the wife of a middle Eastern autocrat who thinks nothing of murdering his people you wonder whether they will next be glorifying Eva Braun for her choice of boyfriend.

For the most part the ads are prosaic. After all, Vogue is a trade magazine whose primary purpose is to sell goods to distributors and retailers. Nothing wrong with that. Sometimes there’s a good laugh to be had from awful Photoshop work, like the March 2012 issue where a famous and famously overweight pop diva du jour has magically developed a svelte figure complete with sunken cheeks and high cheekbones. Who cares. This is sales not reportage. Photoshop away, says I. Yet, every now and then, you get something really special, as was the case with the Lord and Taylor ad back in 2006.

Another example of this multi-generational picture cropped up in a Dolce and Gabbana ad in the February, 2012 issue.

Posed seemingly outside an aged Italian villa, three generations are on display. The white haired paterfamilias and his (somewhat exiled) wife stand proudly amongst their children and grandchildren, all dressed in costly D&G attire. The faces are full of character, the young women beautiful and the whole thing is expertly arranged and rendered.

The picture shows a Sicilian family in the 50s. The beautiful women are the actress Monica Bellucci and the model Bianca Balti (right).

So profiles of dictator’s wives may not be why I buy Vogue, but the wait for things like this makes the modest annual subscription cost worth every penny. Highly recommended to the visually inclined. Sadly, I cannot find out who took this splendid photograph, part of an extended campaign.

Lillian Bassman

Photographers

A pioneering artist.

Until Irving Penn made the style his own, the province of high contrast, high style fashion photography was that of Lillian Bassman, who passed away eight days ago aged 94. Here are a few examples of her beautiful work.

She worked mostly for Harper’s Bazaar in the 1950s.

Nikkor 300mm f/4.5 ED IF AIS MF lens

Nikon lenses, Photographs

Alphabet soup.

When I added the 300mm Nikkor manual focus lens to my little D700 outfit, it was with the realization that this relatively little used optic did not justify spending a lot of money. So it was off to KEH.com where I picked up one marked ‘BGN’, meaning something between a beater and a dud. However, having purchased from this business in the past, I knew that they grade conservatively and earlier ‘BGN’ purchases had invariably resulted in fine gear with typical superficial markings from use. And so it turned out this time.

What I received, for less than one quarter the cost of the current f/4 AF optic, was a lens with pristine glass, a beyond smooth focus action and …. a wobbly telescoping hood. The trombone assembly for the latter is attached with three small screws and it was a matter of moments to remove it, disclosing that the cork friction strip inside was worn out. I took the easy way out and wrapped one-and-a-half turns of 3M Flue Tape around the inner cylinder and while the result is not pretty the wobble is no more. This is a thin, metallic tape with strong adhesive, and one $8 roll will do more lenses than you want to think about. I’ll give it a spray coat of high temperature matte black paint, of the kind used on car engines. It’s tough and will hide the tape nicely.

The lens focuses down to 8.2 feet (2.5m), which is like a 50mm lens at 16″. That’s close. It also focuses well past infinity, to compensate for warm days, owing to the expansion of the metal used in its construction.

Contrast is high, identical to that of the other two lenses, putting a well deserved lie to all the claptrap you read about ‘designed for digital’ lenses. This is a film era lens (around 1990s vintage) and works perfectly with the sensor in the D700. ‘Designed for Digital’ is yet another advertising hoax designed to separate the gullible from their money.

300mm MF Nikkor. Flue Tape prevents hood wobble.
Circle denotes one of the three trombone retaining screws.

If following moving action is your thing, this lens is not for you. Auto focus will make life much easier in that case. But my primary use is for architectural details, used as often as not with my Manfrotto monopod fitted with a QR release, so I’m in no hurry. The D700 has a focus confirmation light in the finder, with arrows showing which way to turn the focus collar if you are out of focus. This works really well but is very sensitive. In practice, other than at full aperture, I find that simply focusing on the screen works well, the high f/4.5 focusing aperture making images snap in and out of focus readily. The lens shows a hint of chromatic aberration wide open with high contrast subjects, but otherwise has no bad points. With the removable collar it weighs 2.2 lbs. and balances nicely with the heavy 2 lb. D700 body. I dialed it into the ‘Non-CPU lens’ menu on the D700 so the EXIF data correctly reports that a 300mm lens was used.

EXIF data in LR3.

Unfortunately, Lightroom sorts on the ‘Lens’ field when filtering images, so only the actual EXIF for an image will disclose that a 300mm lens was used. The ‘Focal Length’ and ‘Focal Length 35mm’ fields do not constitute searchable EXIF or IPTC data in LR, as far as I can tell. Good luck getting Adobe to fix that.

By virtue of the Internal Focusing design, operating the focus collar moves a selection of elements internally, not the whole lens barrel, so the length of the lens remains fixed and the action is butter smooth. Just a joy to use. I would describe the rendering of micro-detail as close to that of the very expensive 16-35mm and the bargain 85mm D designs, but not as good through f/5.6. At f/8, however, micro-contrast really kicks in and the definition equals that of the other two. A touch on the Clarity slider in LR3 mostly puts matters to right at f/4.5 and f/5.6, and I am finding that the 86/1.4/50/23 Sharpness settings in my import dialog in LR3 for the other two lenses works well.

The tripod collar, easily removed, is well designed, but not in the class of the one on the 400mm f/5.6 Canon L, adopting a threaded fastener in preference to the superior cam lock used by Canon. There is no Vibration Reduction, which keeps the weight down but that savings is offset by the need to carry a support if slow exposures are contemplated. With the collar removed I find the lens easy to handhold.

Wringing it out yesterday I made a few snaps in San Francisco in late sun, all at 800 ISO and mostly with a monopod. These are almost all straight from the RAW originals, with minimal post-processing, with the usual sharpening on import into LR3. The lens retains Aperture Priority (my choice) or Program exposure automation on the D700, with focus at full aperture:

To get a sense of what the lens can do in huge enlargements, here’s a snap at f/8, 1/50th second, ISO 800 with monopod:

Here’s a section from the top left which would make a 40″ x 60″ print:

Not too shabby – notice the level of detail retained in even low contrast areas.

Adding a CPU:

While many lenses allow simple glueing of a CPU to the rear baffle, the baffle on this lens is too large in diameter to provide the required clearance for the CPU.

I therefore set to machining the baffle on my 300mm f/4.5 ED-IF Ai-S lens. The baffle is retained by three radial, countersunk Philips screws. The fourth, proud, slotted screw is for the stop down lever and is not touched.

After doing some measuring it turned out to be very simple. The full thickness of the baffle has to be removed and the depth of removal is conveniently denoted by a ridge on the baffle, visible once removed.

After marking the position of the CPU with a fine scribe, removing the three screws allows removal of the baffle. It shows traces of threadlocker so it would likely be smarter to use some local heat from a soldering iron on the screws first. I lucked out.

The lens’s tripod collar is removed in these pictures.

Three screws removed, the baffle can be slid out.

The thickness of the CPU body material is identical to that of the baffle’s wall, I used a Dremel cut-off wheel, a metal saw and a fine file to make the slot in the baffle. A milling machine would have been nicer! The CPU is circled in red below.

The CPU in place.

This lens’s baffle is 1.613″ in. outside diameter. The wall is 0.118″ thick, thus the inner diameter is (1.613 – 2 x 0.118) or 1.377″. (It is hard to directly measure the inside diameter owing to various reliefs in the metal). This is right in the range of 1.364″ (75-150mm Series E Nikon zoom) through 1.427 (50mm f/2 Nikkor-H) which allowed a straight glue on of the CPU, so glueing the CPU in place such that it’s base (non-contact side) is plane to the inner diameter of the baffle confers the right contact position.

Lens correction profile:

This lens has some chromatic aberration at full aperture and modest vignetting which disappears by f/8. You can download my custom lens correction profile for use with PS or LR by clicking here.