Nikkor 500mm f/8N AI Reflex lens

Nikon lenses, Photographs

Not easy to use, but with massive promise.

Warning: This article could end up costing you money. It debunks all the myths about a much derided class, the mirror reflex lens.

Background:

Name the two photographic themes which were overdone in the 1960s and most lists would prominently feature fish eye images and those taken with mirror reflex lenses. Opposite ends of the focal length spectrum – 8mm and 500mm. The distortion of the former is well known, though I suspect the peculiarities of the latter may be largely forgotten.

Indeed, read about mirror lenses and their objectionable out of focus ‘doughnuts’ in an age obsessed with ‘bokeh’ (The out of focus bits really matter that much? You paid how much for that?) and you have no reason to question Nikon’s decision to discontinue the last of theirs, the 500mm f8, in 2005.

And that is a massive shame, as the post processing wonders of digital have finally conferred the fix for what ails reflex lenses. And what ails them is poor contrast, a small fixed aperture, the need for high ISOs to avoid camera shake and modest resolution. Plus those doughnuts. Digital fixes all of those. f/8 is no longer especially slow, ISO 3200 is no biggie and sharpening in post processing is a given in the world of anti-aliasing sensors and Lightroom.

Doughnuts:

If you want to get those objectionable out of focus doughnuts prominent in your snaps, then be sure to photograph low key subjects against bright backgrounds. But it does not have to be that way. Select your subjects and compositions with a modicum of care and you can largely avoid the doughnuts with this compact tool, a 4″ long 500mm lens, weighing in at some two pounds in your gadget bag, challenging your skills to the utmost. What’s left of the doughnuts, if unwanted, is easily removed in Photoshop, as I show below.

Nikon’s offering:

The best known mirror lens is probably the 500mm f/8 Nikon Reflex-Nikkor. It’s small and light, with exceptionally good mechanical construction. The focus collar is feather light, the fit and finish as good as it gets and all the markings are paint filled engravings. The tripod collar has detents at 90 degrees – why aren’t all collars like this? – and I have fitted a Manfrotto QR plate to mine for use on a tripod or monopod. The latter is a recommended adjunct for street snapping as it takes out the major source of movement blur, vertical motion.

500mm Nikkor f/8 AI N Reflex lens.

Nikon made a few versions of these and the one to get is the last one made, the ‘N’, as it has ultra-close focusing and the lowest weight and bulk. It’s distinguished by an engraved orange arc (for the close focus range) on the focus collar. They usually sell for $650 or so, though prices seem to fluctuate over a wide range; mine came for about half that from the estimable Fred Miranda forum, the sole defect being a smudge of grease on the front glass, easily removed with a Q Tip, lightly moistened in isopropyl alcohol. It seems like most owners take a snap or two, conclude it’s not so good, and sell, making these abundantly available, most having seen little use. The earlier version, slightly bulkier, typically sells for half as much. I have not used it so cannot comment on definition, but I’ll bet that the build quality is comparable, meaning superb in every way. That version weighs a few ounces more, focusing down to 12 feet rather than 5 feet in the last model.

This lens is certainly not easy to use. If you do not use a support your snaps will likely be blurred. Further, even with focus confirmation in the D700, getting the point of focus right is not easy. Nikon says focus confirmation in the D700 needs f/5.6 or faster, yet it works perfectly with this f/8 optic, a lens with immense promise. A truly creative lens, well worth the effort of scaling the steep learning curve.

Processing:

I have found that my default Sharpness import setting of 86 in LR3 has to be increased to 125 with this lens, at which point the images start to perk up. Add some contrast and they start to sing. At ISO 800 and up a bit of luminance noise starts to creep in and is easily corrected in LR3. None of these options was available in the days of film when these lenses were sold new, nor was LR’s Clarity slider, which also helps greatly when more micro-contrast is called for.

As is common with mirror lenses, this optic suffers from ‘hot spotting’ wherein a central circular zone is brighter than the remainder of the image and also from light pincushion distortion. Download my tailored Lightroom lens correction profile here to correct for this, making a great lens even better.

The images in this article were processed without applying this profile and you can clearly make out the ‘hot spotting’ in one or two. In those situations where this detracts from the image, use my profile.

Some snaps:

I have never owned or used a mirror lens so what follows is literally from my first ‘roll’. These were all snapped handheld with ISO varying from 800 to 3200 on the D700. I left the monopod at home just to see what the lens could do handheld, and mostly used 1/500th or faster shutter speeds. Maybe 30% of my pictures were incorrectly focused or showed unacceptable camera shake. A monopod will greatly help to improve the success rate. Used in like conditions with my 300mm Nikkor I had no camera shake down to 1/60th. Without some form of support, it makes sense to use continuous shooting to take several frames of each subject, in the hope that one comes out best.


The magnificent Oakland Bay Bridge.


Viva California!


An artist sketches his subject.


Blurred, yes, 1/60th second handheld does that. But the passion is there.


Umbrellas. Face.


Hair!


Young love.


Tan.


Gandhi. I actually like the out-of-focus effect here.


Red.


San Francisco – America’s finest city.

Photoshopping the out-of-focus bits:

If the appearance of the out-of-focus area is not to your liking, a quick round trip from LR3 to Photoshop and the magic lasso and lens blur filter make things look more orthodox – and more boring:


Orthodox looking blur, conferred using Photoshop CS5.

Doughnuts be gone!

Debunking myths:

‘Experts’ have it that catadioptric lenses of this kind are inherently aberration free. This, of course, is pure rot. Ask the fellows at Hughes/Perkin-Elmer who cost the US taxpayer millions of dollars when their faulty Hubble telescope was blasted into orbit. The subsequent fix requiring replacement of the mirror and software enhancements did not do anyone’s reputation any good and likely hurt NASA’s dwindling prospects of surviving. That said, I have found no evidence of chromatic aberration when pixel peeping my snaps from this Nikon lens. This is not some warmed over, cheap aftermarket imitation. (Note to NASA: Have Nikon make your mirrors next time.)


1/500th, hand held, ISO 800. LR3 sharpening = 125, Clarity = +29, Luminance Noise reduction = +30.

Here’s a magnified version of the top left corner, consonant with a print sized 30″ x 45″:

In use:

The diminutive size of the lens makes it very ‘stealthy’ – here it is compared with the gargantuan 16-35mm current auto-everything zoom (I call the latter my cuckoo lens because it looks as silly on the D700 as a cuckoo does in a warbler’s nest):

The 500mm focuses past infinity – as here – to allow compensation with changing temperature.
The tripod collar, with my QR plate, is rotated 90 degrees in this photograph.

Closest focus is an astonishing 5 feet, or 40% of life size, at which point the length of the lens is a mere one third of an inch or so longer than at infinity. That focus distance is comparable to a standard 50mm lens at 6″. The focus collar rotates well over 360 degrees, but there’s sense in that. The long focus throw greatly aids in critical focusing, and that is a key dictate with this lens. Incredible engineering, thoroughly thought out.

Indeed, when I was snapping the other day on San Francisco’s beautiful Embarcadero, a fellow photographer, toting a Hasselblad no less, stopped to ask me about the strange looking lens on my D700. I gave him the camera and as he pointed it I suspect he was expecting a portrait lens kind of focal length. The look on his face was priceless, and I explained that two of the great motorcycling roads in America are those winding their way up to the mirror telescopes at Mount Wilson in Los Angeles and Mount Palomar in San Diego. The Reflex-Nikkor uses the same technology, though Palomar’s 200 inch mirror will not fit in your bag.

Use on a tripod and why MLU helps:

Another myth says that it’s not possible to properly steady this lens. In tripod use the critical shutter speed range is generally 1/8th to 1/60th, regardless of the lens fitted. That’s where the period of vibrations caused by the DSLR’s flapping mirror and shutter is the highest as a percentage of total exposure time. With shorter exposures the vibes don’t have much of a chance to have a say in the matter and with longer ones they will have long died when the bulk of the exposure time commences. It’s when and how long things shake that matters.

This is easily proved. Using my solid, cantilevered Linhof tripod with a good ball head, I pointed the lens at the Dow Jones chart in my office (Hey! A guy has to eat!) and after focusing using the focus confirmation feature, fired the shutter four times, varying the ISO to get two snaps at 1/25th and two at 1/5th second. In each pair of pictures I let the mirror operate normally in the first but used the Mirror LockUp (MLU) feature in the second. In all cases a wireless remote was used.

The results confirm two things:

  • That shutter speeds around 1/25th are the most likely to suffer definition loss
  • That vibration induced by mirror slap is very significant at these speeds

Without and with MLU at 1/25th second,

Without and with MLU at 1/5th second.

The lesson is to avoid speeds in the 1/8-1/60th range if possible, by changing ISO. Better sharp grain than blurred continuous tone. And if you must use these shutter speeds, use the MLU feature for best definition.

The above enlargements are from 30″ x 20″ print sizes. Pixel peeping the two sharp ones where MLU was used shows that, indeed, the one at 1/5th is the sharper of the two, vibes from the release of the shutter being a smaller percentage of the overall exposure time. The slower shutter speed delivers the sharper result. As the ISO used was 800 and 200, the essentially grainless nature of the D700’s sensor is not a material variable in the comparison.

But if anyone tells you that you cannot get sharp results from this lens on a tripod, you need to read someone else and make sure you use a solid tripod and a wireless shutter release. Proper technique wins every time when it comes to definition. In the two sharp originals taken using MLU, the very finest 6 point text on the chart is sharp and easily read in a photograph taken from fifteen feet distance, confirming the quality of the lens and the accuracy of the focus confirmation feature in the D700’s body.

Use with other makers’ cameras:

For all you envious Canon digital owners out there, adapters are available at very low cost for the current EF mount (EOS – 5D, 5D/II etc.) cameras, and as the lens is MF and fixed aperture, you will have the same operational issues as Nikon fans. I don’t know whether Canon’s focus confirmation beeper works with this lens on the body.

For those suffering from brand loyalty, Canon made a 500mm f/8 Reflex for the discontinued FD mount but even if you can find one, it will not focus to infinity on the current EF mount Canons with a regular adapter. Adapters which permit this interpose a poor quality negative lens element, which is guaranteed to destroy the definition of this fine Canon optic. The same goes for Minolta adapters for Sony Alpha bodies and Pentax K body adapters. Avoid.

Minolta/Sony used to list a 500/8 mirror with autofocus, but I can’t find it at B&H any more. Sony is expert at making a superior product and then discontinuing it before anyone notices. The next Kodak.

Adapters for use of Nikon lenses on Sony NEX and on Panasonic/Olympus MFT bodies are readily available and no negative lens is required, owing to the thinness of these bodies. On APS-C the effective focal length is 800mm, and 1000mm on MFT. One significant advantage of bodies using electronic viewfinders is that the small f/8 aperture will be automatically compensated, rendering the usual, bright image in the finder.

Zeiss once listed both 500mm and 1000mm reflex Mirotar lenses for their long discontinued Contarex bodies, but the cost of those exceeded Greece’s national debt and used copies remain exorbitantly priced and very rare.

Lens correction profile:

As is the case with most mirror reflex lenses, the Nikkor suffers from ‘hotspotting’ – the central area of the image is brighter than the periphery. Accordingly, I have made a tailored lens correction profile, for use with LR or PS, and you can see the fairly dramatic difference when this is applied in the pair of snaps below.

Before and after applying my lens correction profile.

Usage instructions and profile download can be found here. All the pictures above were reproduced before applying the profile, as is clear from those with continuous tone backgrounds.

Conclusion:

It’s ironic that now, when camera and processing technology exist to make the best use of the capabilities of reflex lenses, that all except a few crappy aftermarket brands have been discontinued. A used Nikon Reflex lens is a superb bargain for those willing to work at making it sing and easily the most exciting lens I have used in ages.

Installation and use of a CPU is addressed in a follow-up piece here.

Pachino

Photographs, Short stories

A reminiscence.

He remembered those lazy Saturday afternoons when granddad would ask all the family round to his restaurant. There were no tall buildings back then, the area full of Italian immigrants and artisans. Stonemasons, painters, bricklayers, plasterers, plumbers, cooks. Most, if they spoke English, did so with difficulty and Italian was preferred at work or play.

It was the smells he remembered best.

He remembered how Grandpa would have an immense pot on the stove to which the whole family had to add tomatoes, spices, pepper and salt and the obligatory bottle of chianti. As he sat on his knee, Grandpa would recount stories of the Old Country, and the magnificence of the opera house in Palermo. “My boy, if you ever want to say you have arrived in the world of opera, there are but four venues which testify to talent. Palermo, La Scala, Covent Garden, The Met.” And it was invariably Tosca or La Traviata or La Bohème or (Mario’s favorite) Rigoletto which would be playing in the background on the old Victrola. “Lad” Grandpa would say, “Verdi and Puccini. That’s all you need to know about music.”

He remembered how his job was to change the discs, a task he adored. You would have to flip the huge 15″ acetates every five minutes or so, but it was his job and he was immensely proud of it. He never broke one, fragile as they were.

He remembered how his father had once told him that granddad was known to one and all as ‘The Don’, but to young Mario he would only ever be Grandpa. He never quite knew what Grandpa did for a living but the family never lacked for anything. Tables bursting with all manner of meats, condiments, breads, cheeses, cakes, bottles of wine, as often as not dropped off by grateful friends.

He remembered how obsequious these donors always were, how cowed, always behaving with exaggerated politeness to the young boy. “What a beautiful boy” they would say, as cheeks were kissed, hair tousled.

He remembered when Grandpa had passed away – it must be twenty years now – young Mario leading the procession of mourners, his three brothers and four sisters in lock step behind. Now, he was a man.

He remembered the long black limousines, the unending garlands and bouquets, his father and his father’s friends all dressed in black suits and white shirts, the priests, the ceremony. Hair slicked back, a touch of pomade, scent, heavy gold watches. His mother with all the other veiled women, solemn in their grief for The Don, upright yet broken.

He remembered how on those afternoons, all those years ago, the old man had always told Mario how one day the restaurant would be his. It would pass to his father on The Don’s death and his father in turn would leave it to young Mario. And so it had been. And while Mario, now a successful businessman, had no interest in running the humble eatery, he had kept it out of sentiment for Grandpa and, every now and then, would take the wife and kids there of a Saturday afternoon to hang out with the cook in the kitchen and reminisce about those lovely warm times from far away.

To remember.

Now the place seemed a lone survivor in a sea of mindless high rises, but the neon sign still proudly proclaimed the family name. And when he went there it was as if time stood still and nothing had changed. He was still that little boy who sat proudly on Grandpa’s knee, watching the pot bubble and the pasta cook. He was home.

Pachino, Kearny Street, San Francisco. March 3, 2012.

Nikkor-H Auto 50mm f/2 lens

Nikon lenses, Photographs

Move over, Mr. Hemmings.

When I wrote recently about early manual focus Nikon lenses, I suggested that the 50mm f/2 Nikkor standard lens was a competitor for Leica’s vaunted Summicron. That opinion was not exactly guesswork. I had used the Nikkor extensively as a kid and a succession of Summicrons over 35 years with Leica M bodies. Both optics were beautifully engineered in metal with performance to match. Plastic was not a concept. Nor was multi-coating, AF or VR/IS. That does not take away from the performance of either. My favorite 50mm Summicron was the first black version, and the last with the removable head, made by Leitz Canada. It took on more of the gutsy rendering offered by Nikon and Pentax at the time and deleted one element from the earlier design, making do with just six glasses, not coincidentally the same as the Nikkor addressed here.

With the intention of testing my ‘new’ 50mm MF 1971 vintage Nikkor, I took to the streets of San Francisco the other day with the D700, and had at it. I used the classic metal hood of the period, given to me for no charge by a nice person at Kaufmann’s Cameras in San Mateo, the same location where I had bought the 75-150mm Series E lens for a song. No filter was used. This 50mm lens is not the later “HC” version which was multicoated, and distinguished by a black front ring. This is the earlier single coated version, a classic symmetrical six element Gauss design. Apertures used in the snaps below were f/2 through f/5.6, and f/4 looks like the sweet spot, just like with those Summicrons of yore. Post processing in LR3 was minimal, and my standard Sharpness setting on import of 86 seems just right. Even at f/2 definition is more than adequate to permit large prints to be made, though micro contrast improves a couple of stops down.

Manual focusing proved easy, with the D700’s screen more than up to the task. While there’s always the focus confirmation light as an option, I found I rarely needed to use it, except in very poor light.

Here are some results:


Umbria


Speakeasy.


Biker bar. I had to beat this guy up for a better view of the bike.


Self portrait. Unlike Mr. Hemmings, below, I’m holding the camera right!


Things go worse with Coke.


San Franciscan.


101.


Spotted!


Bubble Lounge.


Blue. At f/2 – definition is even across the frame.

Looks like a keeper to me. All in cost with AI conversion by John White for my mint specimen was $75. Conversion is required for ‘pre-AI’ lenses to permit mounting and metering on modern bodies. Thank you, John, for a job well done!

And if you absolutely must make out like David Hemmings, this lens may even get you a hot date – I suspect he is using the f/1.4 variant:


Click here to read A Fantasy.

Nikon D700 Guide by Thom Hogan

Nikon bodies

The book the factory never published.

I wrote earlier about the poorly thought out Nikon factory manual which comes with the D700. So when esteemed New York photographer Joseph O. Holmes recommended the one written by Thom Hogan, I paid attention. Joe’s life is all about making pictures, not collecting gear, so that opinion meant a lot. On his blog, Joe writes:

A bit of checking on the author disclosed he is a long time Nikon expert, so I ponied up the $80 for the book and PDF version. Hogan does not sell a downloadable PDF, probably to control theft, so you have to wait on the USPS to do its thing. Now that the Apple iBookstore is up and running, hopefully he will offer the upcoming book for the D800 through that distribution medium, where DRM protection should prevent illegal copying far better, and where shipping and packaging costs are zero. The offset is the 30% distribution fee charged by Apple.

As shipped.

While you can get just the PDF on CD with the spiral bound pocket guide, I opted for the version which also adds the 800 page (!) paperback, all for $80. In retrospect that was wrong. The $47 CD version is the best choice if you have an iPad. I moved the PDF to my iPad 1 and it’s a far better reading experience, using GoodReader. In addition to all the quick search and find, bookmarking and annotation functions offered by GoodReader in the iPad version, the definition in photographs is far better – and in color – than that offered by the mass market printing adopted for the book, an understandable economy. Let’s also hope that the D800 version has dynamic links in the index, so that the reader will simply be able to touch a page number to go there. Finally, the next book should also include the handy ‘To Go’ 120 page summary in electronic format, for use on an iPad. In the one I received the ‘To Go’ booklet is available in spiral bound, printed form only.

The CD and the To Go spiral bound summary guide.

Neither the DRM Apple distribution channel (or Kindle for that matter) or easy dynamic linking were available when this PDF was put together some four years ago, so it’s not so much a criticism as a request. Excluding shipping the CD sells for $40, so sell it for $56 through the Apple Bookstore and you still net $40. Would I pay $56 for this download? You bet. The book is excellent. For a $2,000+ camera body, and additional $50 or so to get the best out of the hardware is a modest sum.

Thom writes in response to the above:

“I don’t sell downloads because downloads aren’t actually sales, they’re rentals covered by a license agreement. The way I sell my ebook means that people can treat it just like a regular book. In other words, it has value, and can be sold when you’re done with it (assuming you don’t keep copies). Try that with a DRM book. I’m considering making a change in the future, however, that will also means drastic changes in what you can and can’t do with my books, which is a shame.”

An 800 page manual is overwhelming at first, but once you learn to take it in small installments, camera to hand, you quickly realize just how expert Thom Hogan is and how well he writes. It was no surprise to learn that he was the software architect behind the wonderful Osborne One computer, my first, which I bought in 1981. That machine taught me Wordstar, Supercalc and dBase II, all of which came packaged with Gary Kildall’s superb CP/M operating system and gave me a massive jump on the competition when it came to computer competence – the word processing, spreadsheet and database skills readily transferred to the fabulous IBM PC when that machine was announced. Thom Hogan’s skill with software design transitions easily to his technical writing, which is of a high standard.

As an example, take a look at this extract where he explains the vagaries of matrix metering in the D700:

“Wow! I didn’t know that!” is a recurring reaction when reading this manual.

Here’s a case in point. Try as I might, I simply could not get exposure bracketing to work using the factory manual. The D700’s capabilities in this regard, along with the time lapse intervalometer which is built into the body are extraordinarily flexible …. and complex. I didn’t even know there was an intervalometer! Thom Hogan’s manual made it easy to understand how to set up auto-bracketing and how to avoid the need to have to count how many exposures in the bracketing sequence have been made. As the D700 can bracket up to nine (!) exposures that’s a non-trivial capability. The benefits of bracketing in conferrring massive 11-12 stop dynamic range with minimal noise are exceptional and the Hogan guide makes it all clear. And I thought my (second hand) D700 was faulty until I learned better! Worth the price of the manual alone.

Another example. Did you know the camera can be set to take multiple exposures – up to 10 – merging these into one file? Another lesson learned.

If you are prepared to take the time to digest this book you will come away far better informed and superbly equipped to really wring the very best performance out of the D700, or for that matter, any Nikon for which you buy one of Thom Hogan’s guides. I would expect his D4 and D800/D800E versions to be hot sellers, based on this. Highly recommended. This is the user guide the factory never published.

A cheap wireless remote

Nikon bodies

RF is the way to go.

The Oppilas wireless remote uses radio waves at 2.4gHz, in preferences to Infra Red beams. This means line-of-sight between trigger and camera is not required and also results in an enormous range. I gave up counting at 50 feet and 100 feet is claimed. The camera end goes in the hot shoe, where it can be locked down, and the Nikon bodies using the provided ten pin connector are listed above.

On the D700. The ten pin connector can also be secured using the chrome ring.

The trigger, just under four inches long and very lightweight, has four settings in addition to the on-off and firing buttons. They are single frame, continuous, Bulb and a very handy self-timer. To get Bulb to work the camera’s Mode has to be on ‘M’ and the shutter speed set to ‘Bulb’. Thereafter a first pressure on the remote’s button opens the shutter, a second one closes it. The self timer delay is some 5 seconds. Its use is not so much to allow you to rush into the picture – with a 100 foot trigger range you just take the transmitter with you, of course – but to let vibrations die down in the camera when on a tripod. Use the mirror lock-up feature to further help things and you can get away with shutter speeds in the critical 1/15-1/60th range where mirror slap tends to make for a significant definition robbing effect.

The trigger.

I bought mine from eFraud in the US for all of $22.90 shipped. One of the best features, in contrast to similar remotes I have bought for my 5D and G1/G3, is that neither receiver or transmitter uses exotic, costly batteries. Each makes do with two AAA cells, and four such batteries are provided with the device, along with the usual comical Chinglish instructions. The maker claims a 300 hour standy-by life for the receiver batteries, and 3 years for those in the transmitter! In practice, the receiver is switched off when not in use, and it’s hard to forget as it blinks a red diode when on, so the practical receiver battery life is likely many times that stated.

The only anomaly I have encountered so far is that when the receiver is plugged in to the D700’s ten pin socket, the LCD on the rear of the camera goes dead. Neither menus nor image preview can be invoked. You can fix this by using the receiver with a 2.5mm cable connected to a GPS receiver inserted in the nine pin socket – see the Comments below for details.

A friend in the UK bought one from eFraudUK for a Canon 40D – only the connecting cable differs, and has had like success with it. This device is highly recommended.

I cannot find a Nikon branded device with like specs, but if it exists prepare to have your wallet emptied.