All posts by Thomas Pindelski

About Thomas Pindelski

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Madame Yevonde

Photographers

A famous British photographer.

Somewhat forgotten today, whereas the light of her peers from Beaton to Penn continues to shine brightly, Madame Yevonde (Yevonde Middleton) was the ‘go to’ society and advertising photographer for the best part of half of the previous century, starting in 1920. She pioneered the use of the three plate Vivex color process in the early thirties, where three primary color images were successively exposed, then merged at the printing stage. Conceptually similar to Technicolor used in the movies, this process resulted in highly saturated colors in a world used to black and white.

If you were a society woman in 1930s London, then Yevonde was your photographer of choice, as you sought to memorialize your flouncing about in flimsy fabric dressed as a Greek goddess. The pictures verge on kitsch, but it is high quality kitsch.

Madame Yevonde. Click the picture for the Madame Yevonde web site.

Lady Milbanke as Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons (!)

1930s advertising shot using the Vivex process.

Click the first picture for the web site, which is a lot of fun.

The Tripod Set

Photographs

More legs than a centipede.

I was making my way through the city giving the 80~200 Zoom a workout when I chanced on the Tripod Set.

They all had identical black tripods atop of which were perched identical black cameras. The instructor pointed and they followed his directions, taking it in turns to record their identical Kodak Moment. It was all quite amusing to behold.

The Tripod Set.

Exhausted by all the effort and clearly having left his tripod behind, Beret Man shown here sauntered in my direction and we got chatting.

Beret Man.

“We are practicing HDR” he pronounced, somewhat breathlessly, as he puffed on his cigarette.

“I see”, quoth I, affecting deep knowledge of the technique, being one I gave up on years ago as the results are just too, well, you know, Kinkade-like.

HDR shooters.

Anyway, as I wandered off, marveling at the sheer quantity of expensive gear on show, a passerby spotted the camera on my shoulder and asked what all the fuss was about.

“Oh, that’s the Tripod Set, you know” I replied, in dead earnest. “You are absolutely not allowed in without a tripod.”

“Oh!” he expostulated, rather shocked, and I left him to think about it.

All snaps on the 80~200m Ai Zoom-Nikkor, on the D700.

A few from the 80~200 f/4.5 Nikkor

Nikon lenses, Photographs

Not half bad.

I went on about the Zoom-Nikkor 80-~200mm f/4.5 lens the other day and finally had a chance to take it for a spin.

Light and easy to use, you have to be a bit careful with focus at full aperture as f/4.5 is not all that bright, though the viewfinder focus confirmation LED in the D700 works a treat in marginal cases. Fixing any zoom slop with vinyl tape, as I illustrated, is essential. There’s nothing worse than having the zoom ring flop about in use. In the snaps that follow I mostly used f/4.5 and f/5.6. The lens needs no stopping down to sharpen up and renders out of focus areas in a pleasant, smooth manner at larger apertures.

MIB3.

Friends.

Shine.

Go Forth.

On break.

Bay Bridge.

Sky ride.

For about a Benjamin, the lens is a keeper. Many will prefer the 75-150 Series E which, at f/3.5, is a stop faster and much lighter and smaller, but if you need the extra reach, this lens does nicely. And the 80-200mm is a better lens, clearly out-resolving the 75-150mm through f/8, where the smaller lens catches up.

Paris, 1974

Photographs

A magical place.

A friend is leaving for a much deserved spot of R&R in Paris, so I put together some old snaps to get the creative juices flowing.


Refresh your browser if the Vimeo file is not visible.

If there are many images from the Jardin des Tuileries, I make no apologies for that. After all, why not revel in the most perfect urban setting on earth? The beautiful, bitter sweet fin de siècle piano piece can be found here.

All snapped on my Leica M3, 35mm Summaron, Kodax TriX film. There are 36 images in the slide show, the same number you got on a roll of film back then. These are selected from but three rolls I shot during a one week stay. Film was like that – it discouraged waste.

Paris, je t’aime.

Nikkor 80~200mm f/4.5 Ai lens

Nikon lenses

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.