Monthly Archives: May 2012

Nikkor 80~200mm f/4.5 Ai lens

May 21, 2012Nikon lensesThomas Pindelski

Sharp as a tack.

With original box, no less.

Nikon made a lot of these one-touch lenses. They use one ring for focus and trombone-style zoom. Some 180,000 in all, if serial numbers are any guide, starting in 1969 through December, 1981. The smart money – and not much money at that – opts for the last series in which the earlier 15 elements in 10 groups construction was reduced to 12/9, starting in 1977, with an attendant weight reduction of 2.8 ounces to 26.5 ounces. Many claim the optics improved also, but I have no way of confirming that. Mine is a very late 1981 model from the last production run, all of which was in an Ai mount, meaning the lens will fit all modern Nikon DSLRs. It cost me $130, pretty much at the top end of the range for this lens. Excellent examples can be found for less and most have loose zoom rings. Read on for the fix.

The lens has the usual zoom creep, and a couple of strips of black vinyl insulating tape fixed that in a jiffy, also firming up the focus resistance. Neither its length nor the front or rear glasses move longitudinally when the delightfully light collar is operated to either focus or zoom, but the lens does rotate when focused, so it’s less than ideal for fans of polarizing filters.

Strips of tape in place, arrowed, end zoom creep.

CPU installation:

As I install CPUs in all my MF lenses to enhance function, I set about the 80-200mm. The rear baffle is 1.632″ in diameter, so it exceeds the 1.429″ maximum which allows the CPU to be simply glued on. It’s retained by two countersunk and one longer, proud Philips screws. Be sure to mark the location of the long one, then remove all three. The baffle can then be removed, having first marked the location of the ends of the CPU.

An arc is cut out to accommodate the CPU, to the depth of the plane surface in which the rectangular opening appears. Any excess abrasions can be touched up with matte paint. Here you see the CPU installed in the usual way. This is a very easy machining job and if you are nervous about machining your lenses, it’s an excellent lens to start with. In fact, as the baffle metal which must be removed is so thin, the whole job could be done with a hand file, no Dremel cut-off tool needed. The three other lenses I have had to machine in my collection and the related degrees of difficulty are:

28mm f/3.5 pre-Ai. Difficult, as the baffle is sloped and there’s not much for the CPU to adhere to.
50mm f/1.4 pre-Ai. Risky, as the flange and baffle must be removed and absolutely no adhesive must come in contact with the focusing optics.
105mm f/4 Micro-Nikkor. Easy, but the baffle is so thick that a Dremel tool really makes sense, unless you want to spend ages hand filing.
300mm f/4.5 Ai-S ED IF. Easy, but the baffle is so thick that a Dremel tool really makes sense, unless you want to spend ages hand filing.

A comprehensive list of lenses stating whether machining is required appears here. This will aid the purchase decision for those contemplating CPU installation but preferring not to do anything more than simply glueing the CPU in place.

The CPU glued into the baffle.

Here’s the installed CPU – there is no issue with a broad, sound base for the CPU to adhere to. After checking final alignment, I glued the CPU in place with the baffle removed from the lens, to preclude any possibility of getting glue on the lens. As usual I used two-part epoxy, letting the glue cure 24 hours before using the lens. I touched up the abrasion marks on the baffle with some matte black paint from the local hobby shop.

The CPU in place on the lens. Is that a perfect job or what?

Performance:

This is a professional specification lens in every regard. What minor vignetting there is disappears by f/6.3 and even though the lens stops down to a small f/32, there is negligible diffraction when fully stopped down. The seven-sided diaphragm makes for pleasing, soft rendition of out-of-focus areas and the lens balances well on the heavy D700 body. There are absolutely no qualms about using it fully open at any focal length. While multicoated, the exposed front element suggests both a 52mm protective filter and the HN-7 lens hood make sense. The rear element is fairly exposed, so I use a rear cap when the lens is in my bag. There is no tripod collar and none is needed with this relative lightweight.

How does this zoom at 200mm and f/4.5 compare with the 200mm f/4 Nikkor-Q first made in …. 1961? At full aperture these two lenses deliver identical results. At all other apertures there’s nothing to choose, which is a roundabout way of saying that, given the complexity of making a good zoom, this one is just fabulous. After all, the Nikkor-Q is 200mm, and only 200mm. The zoom gives you a choice of 80-200mm at a similar maximum aperture for a 6 ounce (160 gram) increase in weight and identical bulk.

If you can handle manual focus, have no issues with trombone zooms and like the focal length range, this lens is an outstanding bargain. The faster MF 80-200 f/2.8 Ai-S ED is a real monster by comparison, weighing in at 67 ounces (1.9 kilos). Good luck carrying that around. Trust me, I owned one and was happy to see it move on. The smaller and much lighter zoom profiled here poses no such issues, at the expense of a 1.5 stop loss in maximum aperture.

I’ll publish some pictures snapped with this optic on the D700 soon. On APS-C bodies (D300, D7000, etc.) the effective focal length becomes 120-300mm.

Painted Victorian

May 20, 2012PhotographsThomas Pindelski

Exquisite attention to detail.

Click the picture for the location.

Taken on that little wonder, the Nikon Series E 75-150mm zoom. Small, fast, cheap, sharp. What else could you as for? Oh! yes, add a CPU. Ideal for full frame, and for APS-C sensors it makes for an effective range of 112-225mm, at a fixed f/3.5 maximum aperture.

The accuracy of the GPS device I use on the D700 is breathtaking. If you click the picture and switch to Street View, it’s more accurate than I can argue, showing the exact point at which I stood when pointing the camera to the sky.

Rules of Civility

May 19, 2012Book reviews, PhotographersThomas Pindelski

A fascinating novel.

Click the image for the book on Amazon US. I get no click-through dollars.

Amor Towles’s novel, set in late-Depression era New York is fascinating. It starts with a flash forward to the sixties where the narrator is attending a Walker Evans New York show of the latter’s great subway pictures, and recognizes a friend in one. Not once, but twice. The first image is of the man destitute, the second, a few years earlier, at the height of his wealth in the Roaring Twenties before the Depression.

Major sections of the book are illustrated with Evans’s subway portraits, clandestinely taken and some of the best work he did.

The novel tells the story of the wealthy and their lifestyle, seemingly unaffected by the Depression, insured by inherited wealth. But things can, and do, go wrong. It’s illustrated with the same Walker Evans’s images and strongly recommended.

Celebrity

May 18, 2012Book reviewsThomas Pindelski

Book review.

Click to see on Amazon – I get no click-through payment.

This came along as a welcome gift to my photography book library. When it comes to the bad boy British photographers of the Swinging Sixties, the names you hear most often are Donovan, Duffy and Bailey. But a fourth, with a claim to having been there, is Terry O’Neill, whose pictures of the famous and near-famous are reproduced here.

In a typically well written essay introducing the book, A. A. Gill (who did sterling writing in the Sunday Times before the Dirty Digger came along) summarizes it nicely. Fame, he writes, is haute couture whereas Celebrity is ready to wear.

Some of these pictures leave me cold because given the natural beauty of their subjects it’s quite literally true to say that anyone could do it. I mean, can you imagine taking an ugly picture of Catherine Zeta-Jones, for example? Heck, even if you were a complete klutz, she wouldn’t let you.

But there are others which get through and show insights to the subjects’ characters that are quite fascinating, with perhaps the best being the cover picture, above. There’s a fine one of Roger Daltrey trying to act the land baron and not quite succeeding. It’s tough when, as Pete Townshend once described him, you are just ‘a sheet metal worker from Shepherd’s Bush’. One more poignant is of Tom Jones back in his Welsh coal town, ridiculously overdressed with a huge Rolls Royce. Sad. I wonder if he was in on the cruel joke? One even more moving is of an old Marlene Dietrich (German, yes, but the sheer number of GIs she slept with testifies that she was on our side), emerging from the side curtains onto the stage like a chrysalis becoming a butterfly. A pretty old and past-it butterfly, in her case, but extra points for trying. Another well observed one is of Faye Dunaway, O’Neill’s spouse at the time, on the morning after winning the Oscar, replete with silk gown and Beverly Hills Hotel pool. (Dunaway was a Celebrity; Bailey went one better, marrying Catherine Deneuve who was, and remains, Famous).

It’s a fun book, a confection which occasionally gets you thinking. Was O’Neill a great photographer. No. The fame of his subjects rubs off, but too rarely does his work show the sort of insight common to the terrible trio mentioned above.

There’s a video of O’Neill sounding disillusioned and preaching how digital is not ‘real photography’ which you can see, in lieu of watching the kettle boil, by clicking below. (Refresh your browser window if it’s not visible below):

Paul Bock

May 17, 2012PhotographersThomas Pindelski

An American photographer of Hungarian descent.

Paul Bock makes his home in Los Angeles, one of my favorite American cities. He tells his own story below and it’s one of a dedicated and involved student and practitioner of photography. His work is studied, contemplative and insightful – an oasis of calm in a fevered world. I think you will enjoy his work as much as I do. Click here for Paul’s site.

* * * * *

I was born in Hungary and got my first camera when I was fourteen.

At about that time, I read Perelman’s “Physics of Every Day”, and I was fascinated by this character, who had better eyes then anybody else. Walking in the forest, he could see the birds, the squirrels, the snakes, before they could see him. Thus he lived in a world different than ours: he was closer to the truth. At that time, I wished I had eyes like him, so I could see behind the scene, so I could be part of a world hidden from most.

That childhood fascination is still with me. It is all about discovery, about seeing “the other side”, finding the essence of things, the hidden, the importance, the truth.

At that very special moment when I release the shutter and an emotional rush makes my heart pound and stops my breath, I feel that I am like Perelman’s character: I’ve seen behind the obvious, I’ve gotten a glimpse of that hidden world behind the faÃ§ade and I captured it in my camera.

My intention is to bring this hidden world, my world, to the viewer though my images, and share the excitement of discovery.

I became a structural engineer, and photography had to stay in the background, but was never forgotten. In 1974 I immigrated to America and have lived in the Los Angeles area since then.

In 1998 I purchased a 4×5 camera, and dedicated increasingly more and more time to photography. I was attracted to the richness of detail and tonality of 4×5 film and to the control provided by the camera’s movements. When digital capture reached a reasonable level of quality, I happily embraced it. I still enjoy the freedom and mobility I gained by shedding the 60 pounds of large format gear and the unlimited control available in post processing.

In 2000 I studied photography with Larry Janss (in his early days Larry Janss was Ansel Adamâ€™s assistant and later became a renowned fine art photographer and educator), and in 2004 I graduated from Tri-Community School of Photography in Los Angeles.

In 2008, in a juried competition, my â€œSilent Screamâ€ image (Reproduced below – Ed.) created in Antelope Canyon won the prize of the Associated Artists of Inland Empire.

In 2009 I was invited to present a solo exhibit of one hundred of my images at the â€œEuro Foto Artâ€ Photo Salon in Oradea (Nagyvarad), Romania, and was installed as a creative member of the AAFR (Association of Fine Art Photographers of Romania). Those one hundred photos were later exhibited in Bucharest, Arad and Iasi, and then were donated to the Partium University of Nagyvarad.

I like large prints, and print all my images on an Epson 7800 Stylus Pro printer, using K3 pigment based inks, on Epson Ultra Premium Matte Presentation paper.