Gaol-birds only.
The prison library in Alcatraz once held 15,000 books for the few hundred inmates. Not a bad ratio.
Alcatraz library. D700, 16-35mm @ 24mm, ISO 800.
The library, and the garden once tended by inmates, are the closest you get to a semblance of humanity in this evil place.
Lightroom 4’s enhanced ability to pull up detail in the shadows, especially if you expose for the highlights as I tend to, works nicely here.
The legend continues.
This was one of the finest portrait lenses of the manual focus era. Mine dates from 1970, the period in which Nikon’s mechanical quality peaked. As with all similarly designed lenses, the focus ring is a delight to use and the absence of half stop clicks on the aperture ring a welcome ‘feature’ indeed. Seldom has a feature more confused precision with accuracy, an especial irritant when Aperture Priority exposure is used. As with the 50mm and 200mm of the era, the filter size is a mere 52mm, with engraving, fit and finish as you will not find in today’s offerings. The lens is sharp at any aperture. Vignetting is not noticeable at f/2.5 and the balance and feel on the large D700 body are excellent. I see no color fringing.
In very good condition with perfect glass and a period, reversible lens hood and caps, it cost me $125, already converted for AI operation on modern digital bodies. No protective filter is needed with the hood in place, but the rear element is fairly exposed, dictating the use of a rear cap when the lens is in your bag.
While the diaphragm has but six blades, the absence of high refractive index glasses and simple single anti-reflection coating combine to produce gorgeous rendering of out of focus areas.
Winston works on his latest Lego. At the maximum f/2.5 aperture, ISO 800.
The EXIF data for the above are wrong, as I forgot to dial in the right lens! Another reason to add a CPU. I originally processed this in LR3. Having just upgraded to LR4, I converted the file to the new 2012 Process and it’s subtly better, with improved rendering of light and shadow in Winston’s face.
A wonderful lens for those seeking reality, not brutality, in their portrait work.
Cruel and unusual punishment.
On occasion, we Americans get genuinely serious about convincing the world that most of us were dropped on our heads at childhood by careless mothers, and one standout example of this behavior was the Volstead Act of 1919 which prohibited the sale (if not the consumption) of booze. This quite exceptional piece of stupidity lasted until 1933, creating in the process several American dynasties whose fortunes were made through bootlegging. Whatever the downside of our modern legalized system of corruption known as ‘political donations’ at least it should ensure that no such foolishness recurs. “All control drives up price” the economists teach us, and Prohibition set about proving that in a big way. That little dictum also avoids mention of criminality, which thrives on that which is prohibited.
When the tax authorities finally got to doing the job the FBI could not, namely catching many of the bootleggers, they used tax evasion as the crime, and hang the multiple homicides. A place was needed to lock these capitalist opportunists away and America set about converting its former military prison on Alcatraz Island to a civilian gaol, which rôle it served from 1934 through 1963. It was opened to civilian incarceration just as Prohibition was repealed, but still did a number on the likes of Al Capone and Mickey Cohen, both of whom served time there for tax evasion. Both became popular heroes as a result. The small matters of drug running and the prostitution rings these fellows ran were somehow lost on the public at large.
So in preparing our son for a trip to ‘The Rock’ the other day, I made sure to fill his head with tales of Big Al and speakeasies, finally splashing out on the tickets.
If ever there was a place which set out to administer cruel and unusual punishment, then it has to be Alcatraz. Despite the fairytale setting with views of San Francisco to die for, every effort was made to shield these from inmates’ eyes, and the high walls, minuscule cells and dim windows seem almost calculated to enhance the insane mental cruelty of the place. “An eye for an eye”, appears to have prevailed over the US Constitution and the Eighth Amendment which has it we should behave like civilized people, not like savages. Oh well.
Alcatraz is now a federal park and is in poor shape. Despite the large tourist revenues, it’s being allowed to fall into disrepair, with the sea air speeding matters along. Why, for example, would the magnificent Governor’s Mansion and the Officer’s Mess be gutted, roofs gone, exposed to the elements?
I’ll let my snaps do the rest of the talking, all on the D700 with the 16-35mm lens:
The Golden Gate.
The Officers’ Mess.
Where uniforms for the armed forces were made.
Armored glass.
Guard.
Showers. Don’t drop the soap.
The cells.
My son Winston, in Al Capone’s cell.
Love, freedom, escape.
Atop the staircase from the exercise yard.
Cynically named ‘Broadway’, the main drag.
Escape.
A fine optic.
My latest excuse for adding inexpensive, older Nikkors to my collection is “Roy made me do it”, the Roy in question being none other than English photographer Roy Hammans whose work I greatly enjoy. Now if some guy with a burgeoning check book and conflicted interests – you know, one of those ‘reviewers’ who gets gear free from the manufacturer – tells me something is good, I disregard the ‘advice’ and turn the page. But when a great photographer tell me this is one superb lens at a bargain price, and one which he has happily used for two decades, I think nothing of simply plonking down my cash and waiting for the mail man.
My latest addition is Nikon’s mid-range pro zoom of the 1990s. It’s autofocus and fixed maximum aperture, beautifully made in an all metal barrel, and goes for a song. While closest focus is 2 feet, it will go down to 1:4 life-size at 35mm when a small button is pressed and the focus ring turned. That’s pretty close to the front element at the minimum focus distance and you have to focus manually, but it’s handy in a pinch.
On the camera at 70mm and off at 35mm in Macro mode.
The front element is exposed so a filter and/or hood probably make(s) good sense for protection. The front of the lens rotates with focus so this is not the ideal lens for use with a polarizing filter. The lens uses push-pull zooming like the 75-150 profiled earlier and shows very minor zoom creep when extended at 35mm with the lens pointed to the sky. No effect in real world use, as the zoom pretty much stays put where you last left it. Everything else you need to know is in Roy’s review and test data. This lens is AF but has no VR. There’s a lock for the minimum aperture on the related ring which is used for Aperture Priority automated exposure metering. Contrast is high even directly into the sun, definition is excellent across the frame at all apertures and autofocus is fast.
Roy prepared a very data rich analysis when educating me about the lens, which you can read by clicking the picture below. His mouseover illustrations are especially informative, permitting instant comparisons between results at different apertures. The minimal loss in definition from diffraction at f22 is especially noteworthy:
Click the picture for Roy Hammans’s Nikkor 35-70 f/2.8 tests and comments.
Since this lens was discontinued, Nikon has made its mid-range zooms wider and bulkier – and they cost a lot! Meaning four to five times as much. If your other lenses mesh nicely with the 35-70mm range, look no further, unless you really must have Vibration Reduction. This lens has none.
Some snaps:
Blow Horn. At 70mm, f/16.
The Oakland Bay bridge. At 52mm, f/16.
Triumph. At 40mm, f/5.6, My vignette. I have never seen a motorcycle I did not like.
Fishermen’s Wharf, SF. At 52mm, f/6.7. My vignette.
Self portrait with bike. My vignette. At 35mm, f/13.
Fog City Diner. Sun in frame. I used f/22 to get the star effect. Note only minor ‘ghosting’.
Pier 9. At 48mm, f/11.
Wharf. Lots of these, many in poor shape, in San Francisco. At 58mm, f/6.7.
I have created a lens profile for use with Lightroom 3 and 4 and Photoshop CS4 or later. You can find it here. This profile will make correction of distortion and vignetting a one click process, once installed.
Where was I?
The addition of enhanced geotagging in Lightroom 4 prompted me into looking at options for recording GPS coordinates using the Nikon D700. The camera provides EXIF data fields to store latitude, longitude, altitude (!) and time. Many smart phones, like the iPhone, already record such data and the capability is increasingly making its way into point-and-shoot cameras as they desperately try to postpone the day when they will be history, trampled into the technological dust by cell phones. However, full frame Nikons, which may be around a while yet, lack this technology, so a separate device has to be used.
I looked at Nikon’s GPS receiver and immediately crossed it off the list. It’s wrong in every way. It fits in the accessory shoe where it’s waiting to be wrenched off, and the camera will no longer fit in my camera bag with the unit mounted. It uses an ungainly cable to plug in to the ten pin socket on the front and it sucks on the camera’s battery for power. Switch the camera off and the unit is switched off, meaning 30+ seconds to reacquire a GPS lock when next switched on. (First data acquisition is typically 30-40 seconds with GPS devices, with changes recorded at 1 second intervals thereafter, as long as the unit remains powered up). Try and use the built-in pop up flash with the unit in the camera’s accessory shoe and you cannot. Finally, it’s silly priced at $195. Canon users can rejoice in the knowledge that if the Nikon’s unit is silly priced, the Canon’s means you are Rockefeller, as its GP-E2 costs $270. In that case, of course, you can afford it. It works on the 5D/II, 5D/III and some of the ‘pro’ bodies whose nomenclature I forget. Doubtless aftermarket solutions exist at sane prices.
The right way to do this is to use a very small Bluetooth receiver which plugs directly into the D700’s (or D800/D3/D4) body, deriving GPS data from a separate GPS data logger. The data logger has its own battery to do the heavy lifting of acquiring coordinates from satellites, transmitting these to the receiver on the camera, the latter using modest amounts of power from the camera’s battery for the Bluetooth circuitry only. The logger can be left on all day, as it has a ten hour life, so the reacquisition problem goes away even if the D700 is turned off, as the GPS logger remains on at all times.
The only snags I can see is that you have to remember to recharge the battery in the GPS logger and that there is no ten-pin pass through port, so if you want to use any other device which needs the port, like a cable release, you are out of luck. However, the receiver does have a mini-coaxial socket for remotes so if I can find the right cable I should be able to use my wireless remote uninterrupted. Well, there is one other snag, but it’s unlikely to bother me. the software which comes with the logger will run on Windows only, displaying your journey details. It’s not a snag as it will be a cold day in hell before I ever use Windows again and and I really do not need to retrace my travels. All that matters to me is knowing where the pictures were taken.
The GPS Bluetooth receiver.
The receiver ran $60 on eBay and as the grammar-free English confirms, it’s shipped from China. The vendor is named “photohobby” and lists the device as “Bluetooth GPS adapter AK-4NII for Nikon D4 D200 D300 D300s D700 D2Xs D3 D3s D3x”.
The GPS device itself looks like this – “photohobby” lists a large range of devices which will work:
i-Blue MobileMate 886 Mini Bluetooth GPS Receiver.
I chose this one because it was the smallest and lightest out there, yet still promises a 10 hour battery life. You keep it in your pocket or in the camera bag, switched on while snapping. It cost $47 shipped from CA to CA, Amazon and many others carry it, and comes with USB and car charger cables. Weight is negligible.
Thus my total geotagging investment is $106, or almost half the price of the Nikon OEM solution with its poorly thought out design.
Now, I would love to tell you I have upgraded to Lightroom 4 and gush on about how wonderful it is but there are two reasons I cannot do so. First, I’m not some whore who adulates Adobe in print because I make a living from teaching the illiterate how to use their products. Second, Adobe’s servers are down and I cannot download the upgrade. What else is new?
However, the geotagging functions in LR4 seem easy to use and I’m of the mind that soon geotagging data will be expected, rather than just a novelty. Here’s a snap of how photo locations appear in LR4:
Geotagging in Lightroom 4.
More in Part II when the mail from the People’s Republic arrives. Hopefully, Adobe’s servers will have been fixed by then.
Alternative approaches:
As I seem to be getting a lot of emails on alternative GPS recording methods, all of which I researched before writing the above. Here’s is why I avoided them:
I guess it all comes down to what your time is worth and whether you prefer futzing about to making pictures.