Category Archives: Photographs

Nikkor 300mm f/4.5 ED IF AIS MF lens

Nikon lenses, Photographs

Alphabet soup.

When I added the 300mm Nikkor manual focus lens to my little D700 outfit, it was with the realization that this relatively little used optic did not justify spending a lot of money. So it was off to KEH.com where I picked up one marked ‘BGN’, meaning something between a beater and a dud. However, having purchased from this business in the past, I knew that they grade conservatively and earlier ‘BGN’ purchases had invariably resulted in fine gear with typical superficial markings from use. And so it turned out this time.

What I received, for less than one quarter the cost of the current f/4 AF optic, was a lens with pristine glass, a beyond smooth focus action and …. a wobbly telescoping hood. The trombone assembly for the latter is attached with three small screws and it was a matter of moments to remove it, disclosing that the cork friction strip inside was worn out. I took the easy way out and wrapped one-and-a-half turns of 3M Flue Tape around the inner cylinder and while the result is not pretty the wobble is no more. This is a thin, metallic tape with strong adhesive, and one $8 roll will do more lenses than you want to think about. I’ll give it a spray coat of high temperature matte black paint, of the kind used on car engines. It’s tough and will hide the tape nicely.

The lens focuses down to 8.2 feet (2.5m), which is like a 50mm lens at 16″. That’s close. It also focuses well past infinity, to compensate for warm days, owing to the expansion of the metal used in its construction.

Contrast is high, identical to that of the other two lenses, putting a well deserved lie to all the claptrap you read about ‘designed for digital’ lenses. This is a film era lens (around 1990s vintage) and works perfectly with the sensor in the D700. ‘Designed for Digital’ is yet another advertising hoax designed to separate the gullible from their money.

300mm MF Nikkor. Flue Tape prevents hood wobble.
Circle denotes one of the three trombone retaining screws.

If following moving action is your thing, this lens is not for you. Auto focus will make life much easier in that case. But my primary use is for architectural details, used as often as not with my Manfrotto monopod fitted with a QR release, so I’m in no hurry. The D700 has a focus confirmation light in the finder, with arrows showing which way to turn the focus collar if you are out of focus. This works really well but is very sensitive. In practice, other than at full aperture, I find that simply focusing on the screen works well, the high f/4.5 focusing aperture making images snap in and out of focus readily. The lens shows a hint of chromatic aberration wide open with high contrast subjects, but otherwise has no bad points. With the removable collar it weighs 2.2 lbs. and balances nicely with the heavy 2 lb. D700 body. I dialed it into the ‘Non-CPU lens’ menu on the D700 so the EXIF data correctly reports that a 300mm lens was used.

EXIF data in LR3.

Unfortunately, Lightroom sorts on the ‘Lens’ field when filtering images, so only the actual EXIF for an image will disclose that a 300mm lens was used. The ‘Focal Length’ and ‘Focal Length 35mm’ fields do not constitute searchable EXIF or IPTC data in LR, as far as I can tell. Good luck getting Adobe to fix that.

By virtue of the Internal Focusing design, operating the focus collar moves a selection of elements internally, not the whole lens barrel, so the length of the lens remains fixed and the action is butter smooth. Just a joy to use. I would describe the rendering of micro-detail as close to that of the very expensive 16-35mm and the bargain 85mm D designs, but not as good through f/5.6. At f/8, however, micro-contrast really kicks in and the definition equals that of the other two. A touch on the Clarity slider in LR3 mostly puts matters to right at f/4.5 and f/5.6, and I am finding that the 86/1.4/50/23 Sharpness settings in my import dialog in LR3 for the other two lenses works well.

The tripod collar, easily removed, is well designed, but not in the class of the one on the 400mm f/5.6 Canon L, adopting a threaded fastener in preference to the superior cam lock used by Canon. There is no Vibration Reduction, which keeps the weight down but that savings is offset by the need to carry a support if slow exposures are contemplated. With the collar removed I find the lens easy to handhold.

Wringing it out yesterday I made a few snaps in San Francisco in late sun, all at 800 ISO and mostly with a monopod. These are almost all straight from the RAW originals, with minimal post-processing, with the usual sharpening on import into LR3. The lens retains Aperture Priority (my choice) or Program exposure automation on the D700, with focus at full aperture:

To get a sense of what the lens can do in huge enlargements, here’s a snap at f/8, 1/50th second, ISO 800 with monopod:

Here’s a section from the top left which would make a 40″ x 60″ print:

Not too shabby – notice the level of detail retained in even low contrast areas.

Adding a CPU:

While many lenses allow simple glueing of a CPU to the rear baffle, the baffle on this lens is too large in diameter to provide the required clearance for the CPU.

I therefore set to machining the baffle on my 300mm f/4.5 ED-IF Ai-S lens. The baffle is retained by three radial, countersunk Philips screws. The fourth, proud, slotted screw is for the stop down lever and is not touched.

After doing some measuring it turned out to be very simple. The full thickness of the baffle has to be removed and the depth of removal is conveniently denoted by a ridge on the baffle, visible once removed.

After marking the position of the CPU with a fine scribe, removing the three screws allows removal of the baffle. It shows traces of threadlocker so it would likely be smarter to use some local heat from a soldering iron on the screws first. I lucked out.

The lens’s tripod collar is removed in these pictures.

Three screws removed, the baffle can be slid out.

The thickness of the CPU body material is identical to that of the baffle’s wall, I used a Dremel cut-off wheel, a metal saw and a fine file to make the slot in the baffle. A milling machine would have been nicer! The CPU is circled in red below.

The CPU in place.

This lens’s baffle is 1.613″ in. outside diameter. The wall is 0.118″ thick, thus the inner diameter is (1.613 – 2 x 0.118) or 1.377″. (It is hard to directly measure the inside diameter owing to various reliefs in the metal). This is right in the range of 1.364″ (75-150mm Series E Nikon zoom) through 1.427 (50mm f/2 Nikkor-H) which allowed a straight glue on of the CPU, so glueing the CPU in place such that it’s base (non-contact side) is plane to the inner diameter of the baffle confers the right contact position.

Lens correction profile:

This lens has some chromatic aberration at full aperture and modest vignetting which disappears by f/8. You can download my custom lens correction profile for use with PS or LR by clicking here.

TA legs

Photographs

A spot of timing.

I reckoned that if I pressed the button just so, the legs would mimic the Transamerica pyramid. In the event, I lucked out, with the parking meter adding a surreal touch.

Click the picture for the video. On Pacific Avenue, San Francisco. G3, kit lens.

InterfaceFLOR, in the interesting foreground building, makes carpet squares for industrial and office use – modular carpets for a modular world. What’s not to lke about that lovely brickwork?

Click the image above to watch a video explaining how I changed a bland, washed out sky to gorgeous cyan with a couple of quick adjustments in Photoshop.

Update: A reader kindly pointed out that my fairly aggressive brightening of the foreground had introduced noise, so a couple of tweaks on the noise sliders in LR3 put that to right. The revised picture appears above. Note to self: Have eyes checked.

The Abduction

Photographs, Short stories

A tragedy.

She remembered the chill running down her spine.

The man was tall. Tall and wide in that Mediterranean way. He blocked the light. The hair a touch too perfect, maybe on the verge of receding, the muscles well defined, the loose fitting black suit jacket sporting a bulge on one side.

But most of all she recalled the man’s smell. It was a strange mix of machismo and Old Spice, both sickening and alluring at the same time. She recalled the scent from her father and remembered how she had sworn to get away from that tedious middle class world of movies and dinner out once a week with her mum. So controlled, so cloying. She wanted so much more.

“Is Roger in?” he asked.

Instantly she knew he had asked that a thousand times. It was not a question he expected to be taken lightly or one to be denied. There was a mix of command, expectation and threat in the voice, lower pitched than she expected.

The eyes ran down her body, starting at her full, rouged lips, pausing at the single strand of pearls, resting that moment too long on her cleavage and then down past her slightly too tall body to her waist and legs, perfectly defined by the black Chanel evening dress. Too tall for Vogue, she had found her niche in the interior decorating line. The clients were men as often as not, frequently accompanying their trophy wives to that little place on Jackson Square that kept her amused during the week. Strictly high end furnishings, neatly extricated from China and England thanks to understanding customs officers, and commanding healthy mark-ups. Instant credibility for the hedge fund manager du jour who had hit it big before the SEC came calling. At least the male clients appreciated her for what she was, unlike the interior decorators who were the order of the day, and seemed to have eyes for one another only.

“Who shall I say is calling?” she asked, surprising herself at the slight quiver in her voice.

“Guido. He knows me.”

Roger visibly started when she announced their visitor. She recalled how his face turned the color of the Aubusson she had so lovingly secreted away on her last visit to Chartres. It was posited as a buying trip to her partner Nigel, but the reality was that she and Roger had devoted much of it to the first throes of new love, lost in one another’s arms most of the time. She recalled his long late night cell calls, all whispers and hidden glances, but made nothing of them. Roger was in money management of some sort, so she supposed that secrecy was part of the game. And that new 911 he had picked up in Zuffenhausen at the factory, a gorgeous antique silver Turbo which made a rude noise, testified to his success. A glance at the speedometer on the Autobahn had told her that this was as fast as she ever wanted to travel on the ground and she had closed her eyes and enjoyed the fragrance of the seven Schwabian bulls it had taken to line the interior.

The meeting took maybe twenty minutes. Even though the library doors were thick oak – she had personally seen to their import from that old castle in Berkshire – she could clearly hear the raised voices through them. When Roger finally came out his color had changed from Aubusson green to something more reminiscent of China white. He had rushed to the living room and poured himself a generous tumblerfull of Aberfeldy 21 – he had it specially shipped from the distillery in the Highlands – downing it in two great gulps. As the color came back to his cheeks, she gently inquired.

“Roger, darling” she knew that he loved the ‘darling’ part, “is anything wrong?”

“No, nothing honey. Nothing for you to worry about”.

She knew better than to ask, but she recalled how Roger had shouted out in his sleep that night “No, no, not that!”

She had always smoked too much, and during periods of stress she only smoked more, castigating herself for the habit. How her mother had upbraided her for that. What was Raleigh thinking of when he brought those early tobacco leaves back to the West? The only calming influence on such occasions was her first love, from her days immersed in English Lit at Vassar. Fyodor Dostoyevsky. So it was ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ that she had taken with her to work that fateful day.

It all happened so quickly. She has been waiting too long outside the store, had smoked too many cigarettes. Nigel had asked if she needed a ride, and she had brushed him off. And when it happened, where she was expecting Roger there was a hulking Guido emerging from the long, black limousine. His scent had a new taint. She recalled it from her chemistry lessons at school. Suddenly, one of her Blahniks had fallen off as she struggled hopelessly against Guido’s powerful biceps, the red Dior wrap ripped off, her Prada eyeglasses hurting her then falling with a sickening crunch to the sidewalk, and as the handkerchief came up to her mouth, all she could recall was a mix of man odor, Old Spice and chloroform. Her book dropped to the ground and she felt herself falling, falling, falling ….

Osgood Place, Jackson Square, SF. Yesterday.