Category Archives: Photographs

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.


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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.

Painted Victorian

Photographs

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.

Out and about with the 28mm Nikkor

Nikon lenses, Photographs

The perfect street snapper.

While the manual focus Nikkors I use lack the immediate response of the later AF optics, they remain a lot of fun to use and the 28mm f/2 Nikkor N.C. doesn’t need that much focusing in any case, owing to an extended depth of field at all but the largest apertures. They are also far better made than the current optics, making the whole experience a pleasure. The 28mm f/2 is a chunky piece and melds nicely with the far from svelte D700 body. The following snaps use my tailored lens correction profile which you can download here. I use it with Lightroom 4; it works equally well in Photoshop.

I set to it the other day and took but this one lens with me, hitting the streets of San Francisco, as usual. The 28mm is arguably the ideal street snapper – not too long, not too short – and the f2 speed will handle just about anything you will encounter.

Lunch break in the Castro District.

Thee World’s Smallest Side Show. On Castro Street.

In addition to a particular lifestyle, you will see a lot of dogs in the Castro District.

More pups. At f/2.

Noticeboard in the vibrant Castro community. French lessons to massages ….

Mission District muralist. A team of six friends was working on this
mural. This was the team leader, and he told me they had been at it all day.
They remove the spray tips from the aerosol cans to get a sharper line.
Here they are filling in the rough sketch.

The Taqueria on Mission at 25th Street makes divine food.
This little boy was enjoying his meal. Snapped at f/2.
A face straight out of Goya‘s oeuvre – questioning and tragic.

Lovely window light at La Taqueria. At f/2.8.
The lens profile fixes the corner shading. Click the picture.

Late evening light catches a hopeful fisherman at the Bay Bridge

The 28mm f/2 pre-Ai Nikkor N.C. is a crackerjack lens. A thrill to use. My multicoated version (hence the “C” in the designation) renders very contrasty images on the D700, needs no stopping down for even big prints, has a lovely feel and heft and just seems made for the modern full frame Nikon DSLR. Not bad for a 40+ year old optic.

Francis Bacon

Paintings

A dark modernist.

No painters used photography more than Degas, David Hockney and Francis Bacon (1909-1992). For the last, it was the source of much of his output of dark, brooding, tortured canvases, familiar to all. I doubt that his personality was captured better than by the expressionist photographer Bill Brandt in this powerful portrait:

Bacon’s foundation has just released a free e-book on the painter, his studio and his use of photography, well explained in the first of the two included videos. You can read more about it here, whence you can download it to your iPad at no cost. The book is an example of where art publishing is headed and is beautifully done.