Monthly Archives: October 2013

The new mural

Photographs

In preparation.


The life of a Mission District mural is short.

Nikon D3x, 20mm UD Nikkor.

For the next few days I will be running street snaps taken with the 20mm UD Nikkor, which will allow readers to get a sense of the performance of this old yet still outstanding MF optic.

25th Avenue

Photographs

In San Mateo, CA.

My son has been learning karate for some six years now at a place on 25th Avenue in San Mateo, so it’s a street I have known for a long time.

The appeal here is that of an America of yesteryear. No chain stores, no big box outlets and no urban blight from the likes of Starbucks yuppies or McDonald’s trash. The feel is that of an old, comfortable shoe. Maybe not in the first flush of youth and, yes, the soles could use some work, but it is real and warm and welcoming.

My son also got his first haircut on 25th Avenue for no other reason than I also used to get my hair cut there and Nina had been in the same place for 45 years. Longevity is very much a feature of the businesses here.

One of the sublime pleasures of visiting 25th Avenue is to drop by Kaufmann’s Cameras to chew the fat with Bob who has been running the place for 53 years now.


Bob at Kaufmann’s Cameras. Strictly a shirt and tie man of the old school,
with manners to match.

This is like photo hobbyist stores used to be, complete with darkroom supplies and used film-era gear for sale at modest prices. It’s packed to the rafters with memorabilia and if you ask nicely Bob will let you go in the back to sift through drawer after drawer of old boxes in search of a piece for some project or another. I am, in truth, a lousy customer, having only ever bought a few Nikon film-era lens hoods, filters and a splendid used 75-150mm Series E Nikkor zoom over the years, but Bob always has time to chat and there’s little about the photo business he does not know. It’s fascinating to learn how he is adapting to the online era and the brute competition of the likes of Amazon, and surviving happily. Long may he do so. In an era of incresing gear complexity, this business proves that expert advice remains valued by many.


Darkroom supplies.

Darkroom supplies and film SLRs are a nice profit center for the store, the teachers at the nearby College of San Mateo for some reason insisting that their students learn traditional techniques. Quite why anyone would actually pay to learn to use film is a mystery to me, but whatever.


Memorabilia everywhere – and lots of film!.

Kaufmanns reminds me of my happy days as a student working photo retail in my vacations and it’s a pleasure knowing that such places are still around.

Cross the road and you will find yourself in Vinyl Solutions Records which has been here thirty years. Whether it’s vinyl, cassette tapes, traditional reel tapes or even large format LP-sized Laser Discs, Vinyl Solutions is the place. With vinyl newly in vogue, the store is enjoying better times. And yes, they will sell you a new ‘needle’ for your gramophone.


Vinyl Solutions.

Italian has long been the dominant ethnicity here and you can eat happily on the broad sidewalk while the locals regale you with thrilling tales of the construction and garbage businesses.


Lanterna Ristorante.

Lanterna Ristorante will be pleased to provide you with the finest in local Italian fare. If you like earthier Italian, cross the road to Luceti’s where the bartender will make sure to disregard you while chatting with his buddies, their hair just that bit too perfect, about whatever ball game they have money on. Probably better not to interrupt, Sicilian ancestry being what it is. The wait staff appear related to the barkeep given their demeanor, but the food is consistently good.

25th Avenue is very much a community and its business owners get into the spirit of the season:


Halloween celebrants.

Some new age businesses make you wonder – what on earth is a ‘Brow Bar’? Can’t see this one surviving for long, though I wish it good luck.


Mazzy Brow Bar.

New ethnicities abound, and while the older locals will grumble under their breath, they will adapt as they have for the past century.


Kobeya Japanese restaurant.

Other new arrivals make no bones about their origin:


The Mao set. No MSG, but canine delicacies on demand.

The Patio Coffeee Shop may change its opening hours from time to time, but having been here some forty-nine years it’s reasonable to conclude that the owner knows what he is doing. Typography is clearly not one of his skills:


Times change. Seems like Cappuchino is no more. iPhone5 snap.

He’s Lebanese and as nice a man as you could meet, though he wisely keeps his origin under wraps. On a Saturday morning you will generally find some Harley types at the bar here, their mild demeanor in perfect contrast to their noisy machines. This is a traditional greasy spoon and health food nuts are definitely not welcomed here.

Down a couple of stores from the greasy spoon is a traditional cobbler where you can actually get your shoes repaired:


At the cobbler’s. Panasonic G3/kit lens.

Cross the road and you are in the land of tamales and burritos. There’s no wealth on display in this unmarked joint – to see the Rolex set try the Italian places – but the food and aromas are mouth watering.


Hispanic diner. Panasonic G3/kit lens snap.

The sole ceiling fan here is so out of alignment that it goes ‘clunk-clunk-clunk’, which seems perfectly in keeping with the demeanor of the place, where English is most certainly a foreign tongue.

All snaps on the Nikon D3x with the 20mm UD Nikkor unless stated otherwise.

Sad update March 2016:

Kaufmann’s Cameras is no more after 60 years, a greedy landlord having tripled their rent. As of July 2016 the place remains ‘for rent’ testifying to the victory of greed over economics.

Nikkor 20mm f/3.5 UD lens

Nikon lenses

Finally! Wide angle bliss.

I have been using the 20mm f/3.5 Ai-S Nikkor for a while now and it is both compact and optically excellent. But my first choice in a classic MF 20mm Nikkor was always the earlier UD of 1967. The snag is, it’s not easy to find a mint specimen.

The UD was a very special lens for its time. Until its creation, Nikon F owners made use of the mirror lock-up and separate optical finder needed to accommodate the 21mm design from Nikon’s rangefinder line. Hardly consonant with the SLR concept. Leica (with the 21mm Super Angulon for the original Leicaflex) and Zeiss (with the 21mm Biogon for the fabulous Contarex) adopted like strategies, mirror lock-up and all. All three came with the most awful, distorting viewfinders imaginable.

But the UD applied Nikon’s retrofocus research and resulted in a super-wide lens which needed no mirror lock-up or external finder. You saw through the pentaprism finder what the film would record. And it was massive, compared to their later 20mm designs – the 20mm f/4, f/3.5 and f/2.8, all MF and all excellent. Nikon lists the f/2.8 to this day.

So why bother spending all this time tracking down a pristine UD when all its successors are wonderful? Well, it’s that old fixation of mine. Metal. I believe lenses should be metal, not rubber or plastic mounted. I believe their ergonomics should fit the camera. And the D3x and D2x on which I use my lenses are very large bodies indeed. The 20mm Ai-S on the D3x is, frankly, rather dwarfed by the bulk of the body.

I searched some 18 months for a perfect UD specimen, being outbid several times on eBay as the UD seems to be attracting that vermin of the photography world, the gear collector. My sample, indistinguishable from new in every way, cost me $327 delivered, some $75 more than when I first started searching. By contrast, the Ai-S f/3.5 version can be had for maybe $250, or so. The CPU adds $30 and the Ai conversion requires a Dremel tool with a cut-off wheel, a small file and sweat equity.

Here’s the real thing:


D3x, 20mm f/3.5 UD Nikkor. Mine was made in September, 1973.
Production ceased in April, 1974.

Nikon pulled no punches here. This lens is simply outstanding optically and mechanically. Almost 50 years after it was designed it remains a bedrock of solidity and pure old-fashioned mechanical engineering. Handling, feel, balance on the big body – there’s no comparison with its smaller and lighter successors. No play, no wobble, just high integrity build and finish. A man’s lens. For sheer beauty of execution only the pre-Ai 200mm f/4 Nikkor-Q compares.

My example was pre-Ai, as were all 20mm UD Nikkors, so it necessitated Ai conversion. Forget about trying to find genuine Nikon factory conversion kits – they are rarer than hen’s teeth.


A factory modified UD Nikkor – note the protruding
ridge which abuts the aperture follower on the lens. Good
luck finding the modified aperture ring on the used market.

And conversion of this lens is tricky. Instead of just relieving the aperture ring to clear and activate the aperture follower on modern digital bodies, the lens has to have a protruding part attached to contact the follower, unlike other pre-Ai lenses. The easiest way to do this is to reverse the stock Nikon aperture claw, and cut off part of it until the dimensions are right. Nikon unwittingly provided just what’s needed for digital conversion, and the aperture claw I used has no purpose on modern Nikon DSLRs so its reuse has no negative effects. The modified, cut down claw will correctly contact the aperture follower as illustrated below.


The aperture follower. Very robust despite appearances,
the final thing is painted black to match the lens.


The aperture follower in use on the Nikon DSLR body.
Note the vacant claw retaining threaded hole to the right.

A note on ‘de-clawing’ the lens: Ordinarily, once I have converted an MF Nikkor to work on the modern Nikon DSLR, I remove the aperture claw on top of the aperture ring and store it. Because the two retaining screws are small and easily lost, I replace them in the vacant holes in the aperture ring, using a magentized screwdriver (any other way invites insanity). Do not replace the second claw retaining screw in the 20mm UD Nikkor (the other screw is used to retain the reversed claw). Doing so you will find that the screw countersinks too deeply into the innards of the lens and will prevent movement of the aperture ring.

The contrast in size with the later 20mm f/3.5 is striking:


The 1967 design pre-Ai UD and the 1977 design Ai-S.
No rubber or plastic on the UD.

The handling of the big UD on the large D3x and D2x bodies is ergonomic perfection.

How about resolution? At normal enlargement ratios neither lens will let you down in big prints. But the optical design philosophies could scarcely be more different. The UD is computed for maximum resolution at the center and hang the edges. Indeed, central resolution remains largely unchanged, and outstanding, at all apertures, being pretty much perfect by f/4.5. By contrast the Ai-S optic compromises central resolution, trading it for more even across-the-frame performance. The Ai-S never quite matches the UD in the center and the UD never quite matches the Ai-S in the corners. For reference, I have a 48″ x 36″ print made from a 20mm Ai-S image and it’s perfect at normal viewing distances, so it’s not as if any excuses need be made for the compact Ai-S variant of this lens.

Here are center comparisons at f/3.5 and f/8, UD on the left. I’m using my usual utility pole in the backyard, that exemplar of America’s infrastructure. The equivalent print sizes would be 40″ x 27″, something very few users will ever make, so if you think the UD’s edges are poor and the Ai-S’s center is so-so, bear in mind what you are looking at:


Centers at f/3.5.


Centers at f/8.

And here are the extreme corners:


Corners at f/3.5.


Corners at f/8.

I’ll trade central resolution for corner sharpness any day.

I used the same lens correction profile for the UD as for the Ai-S, after adding a CPU in the usual way. Comparison with the Ai-S showed almost exactly the same level of vignetting and optical errors, meaning wave/mustache distortion of straight lines at the edge. Both lenses cease vignetting by f/5.6.


UD at f/3.5 – no profile. Note wave form distortion
of top of fence and vignetting.


UD at f/3.5 with profile.

You can find the lens correction profile here and use of this profile corrects vignetting and renders straight lines straight, not wavy. Flare into the sun is almost identical, the Ai-S reproducing sharper magenta spots where the UD delivers one considerably smaller one, this despite the huge front element in the UD. In both cases flare spots are far less pronounced through f/5.6, becoming pretty objectionable by f/22 with the Ai-S, though easily corrected in post-processing. Contrast of the two lenses appears identical at all apertures.


The profile in use – Lightroom 5.


UD flare at f/22.


Ai-S flare at f/22.

The sun was just out of the frame in both images and no lens hoods were used. Both lenses have UV protective filters, which probably does not help matters. The UD is single coated, the Ai-S multicoated. The UD only shows a minor loss in definition from diffraction at f/22 – remarkable. To put this further in perspective, the UD is 1-2 stops sharper across the frame then the current 16-35mm AFS G zoom, which costs $1,300. So much for optical progress ….

If you have a big body Nikon and yearn for the days of mechanical engineering which Nikon has never surpassed, the 1967-74 UD Nikkor is for you.


The finished job. The red dot on the CPU serves as an alignment aid when mounting the lens.


Correct EXIF data in LR5, read from the CPU.


Winston hammers away at his latest Lego kit. D3x, 20mm UD Nikkor at f/4.

A few early snaps appear here.