Image as communication...

This might be an interesting jump-off point to consider the role, importance, and impact of imaging.

My thanks to Richard Larson for bringing this to my attention.

Alternative Legacy 3 Lens Kit ~ "extended" version

A couple of days ago I wrote about the "Ultimate 3 Lens Kit."  It was based on some old thinking and the examples of certain famous photographers who started the Magnum news imaging service.  That lens kit consisted of a 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm lens.

Some might wonder why I don't just use, oh, let's say, a Sony 16-70mm ZA f/4 OSS on one of the beautifully small and very capable APS-C EVF mirrorless bodies?  Why not, indeed.  In fact, when traveling and attempting to keep the overall weight of my camera gear to an absolute minimum and to maintain domestic harmony I'll take this lens and put it on a Sony A6000 or NEX7 EVF APS-C and call it "done."

If there ever was one zoom lens to rule them all, it would be this Sony Zeiss.  The out of focus rendition is very similar to Nikkor lenses (ie: gloriously smooth behind the point of focus).  The Sony Zeiss is very sharp.  And there is nearly nothing of that common zoom lens design field curvature that makes the edges go soft when shooting flat 2D subjects.  The rendition of this 16-70mm ZA zoom is something to proclaim far and wide.  Except...

I love the way fixed focal length lenses render.  It's subtle.  It's not obvious (I know, I repeat myself, repeatedly).  Perhaps it's only me who can claim to pixel-peep "see" any differences, but in general, I love Nikkor optics for the way they capture a scene.  They "feel" to me to be a little step above even the Sony Zeiss.

In current times and with the advent of cellphone cameras people have migrated toward using wider angle lenses.  I see this even in photographers who shoot their more "serious" works using larger sensored cameras.  Wider seems to be "better."

So, in the spirit of keeping up with the times, here is a proposal for a slightly different 3 lens kit.  This answers a question of what would happen if we extended the "ends" of the kit just a little bit. What might that look like, while remaining very usable for a wide range(r) of subjects?

On the long end, I propose a slightly longer than 85mm Nikon Nikkor-P 105mm (Xenotar-type) f/2.5 pre-Ai lens.  The wide open "character" of the 105mm f/2.5 Nikkors is nothing short of sublime. I'm sure everyone remembers Steve McCurry's famous images made using this focal length lens from Nikon.  It seems to have cemented not just his celebrity but the celebrity of the optic, too.  Not a bad place to start building this extended range 3 lens kit, then.

In the middle, I put an early Nikon Nikkor-S Auto 50mm f/1.4 lens.  This is filled with "character" when shot wide open.  Stopped down a stop or two and lens performance looks remarkably similar to current optics.  From this standpoint the 50mm Auto might be seen as an interesting "all around" selection.  You can have your "character" and modern rendition out of the same focal length lens.

Moving to the wide end of things, 28mm lenses fall nicely between all too often distorting 24mm optics (similar focal length to cellphone "selfie" lenses) and the "Ultimate 3 Lens Kit" 35mm selection.  On one hand, 28mm's is definitely wider than 35mm.  On the other, 28mm's take a bit more work than 24mm's to make it distort a scene.  As a bonus, the 28mm lens I chose has a bit of the wide open aperture "character" that I've come to appreciate from early Nikkor manual focus lenses.

Here it is, a proposal.  This lens selection is wider on one end and longer on the other than the "Ultimate 3 Lens Kit" and contains three lenses that I find are filled with "character."

• Nikon Nikkor-N 28mm f/2 pre-Ai (updated with factory Ai aperture ring)
• Nikon Nikkor-S 50mm f/1.4 pre-Ai
• Nikon Nikkor-P 105mm f/2.5 pre-Ai
  

 

Legacy 3 Lens Kit ~ "classic" version

When I was young and dinosaurs still roamed the earth my photographer friends and I would talk a lot about the "Ultimate Camera/Lens Kit."

Following closely from well known practitioners, comme Henri Cartier Bresson, we settled on 35mm, 50mm , 85mm as the perfect kit to carry wherever we went and to any photoshoot we made.  We used 50mm most of the time and reached for the 35mm or 85mm lenses when a situation warranted it.

It was simple.

For many years I carried either a Canon F1, a Pentax MX, a Nikon FM, or a Leica M3 with a 50mm in the appropriate lens mount.

The Canon F1 was the original first model series version.  It was built like a tank.  The camera survived a drop at one of the first Long Beach Grand Prix, it was that strong.  Additional lenses for it were a 35mm f/3.5 FD, a 50mm f/1.8 FDn, a 135mm f/2.5 FL, and a 200mm f/3.5 FL.  Yet, the vast majority of the photographs I made with it were using the 50mm lens.

The Pentax MX was a beautifully small camera and the 50mm f/1.7 lens I used was perfectly balanced for the way the camera handled.  I had a couple other lenses for it, but the 50mm was my "go to" optic.  I made some nice images with that camera.  That was one of the more "perfect" kits I owned.

The Nikon FM was slightly larger than the Pentax.  I had a 50mm f/1.4 Auto Ai that I used.  The camera body had a winder, too.  It was a fun kit, but I was too young and inexperienced to realize what I had.  The Nikkor lenses were considered the class of the world for very good reason and I was completely clueless.

The Leica with an interesting 50mm f/1.5 Leitz came to me after a Samy's Print Lab big "important client" print session that netted enough money to get to decide between the German camera, a Swedish Hasselblad 500C/M, and an Ansel Adams 16x20inch "Moonrise" print.  Yes.  I'm stupid.  I should've purchased the Adams.  In fact, I can still see that gorgeous print in my mind's eye hanging in the Best Gallery in Yosemite Valley.  Ugh.  Oh well.  Missed opportunities, and all that.

Fast forward from the Dinosaur Era to the present and I find myself with a nice collection of Nikon Nikkor glass and a Sony A7 full frame mirrorless camera.  The Sony camera is actually smaller and lighter than a Canon AE-1 film body.  Though, it must be noted that with age the Sony, Nikkor kit is beginning to feel a little heavy.

Anyway, here is what my friends and I used to call the "Ultimate Kit."  It's been repurposed for use in the Digital Age and consists of a Nikon Nikkor-O 35mm f/2, a Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 AiS, and a Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 K.

 

On converting digital Color into Black and White ~ One Last Time

Before I pause this blog, I thought I'd reiterate something that I learned about converting digital color to black and white.  

When I used to make prints for other photographers for a living, I always strove to tone richness, creamy whites, and deep/beautiful blacks.  If you look at so much of the modern digital black and white work it can be a muddy mess of yuck.  Sure, current practitioners might not see things that way.  They likely believe their B&W work is just wonderful.    Yet to me I have to ask why is so much work missing that tonal richness we used to have back in the day?

It turns out there's a very simple way of getting back to that classic old print richness and I wanted to write about it again, but Mike Johnson beat me to it.  And he says what needs to be said more clearly and succinctly that I ever could.

Here is a link to his Online Photographer blog article.

 

 

I now know that processing digital files can be more flexible and more accurate in black and white imaging than film ever was.  And, with a bit of knowledge, we can achieve that old silver print "richness" that so much of the current digital B&W is lacking.  

It comes down to this two things.  First, humans see color tones in black and white in a specific way and, second, the material properties of silver halide papers and their effects on printed from negative images are rather different than people might think.

First, the way humans see color converted to black and white is very interesting.  Tim Soret does an excellent job of explaining what we "see." What human perception modeling allows is tonal separation.  Let me say this again, with emphasis: What human perception modeling allows is tonal separation.

This used to be the Holy Grail of black and white film photography.  In digital work to touch that Holy Grail of tonal separation is as simple as understanding which tool to use and why.

 

 

As a side note, I was happy to see that Sony's in-camera black and white conversion fits M.Soret's description of human perception.  When I set a Sony mirrorless camera up for black and white, I can see the effect in the EVF and on the LCD.  Sony has done an outstanding job of eliminating much of the guesswork.  A photographer can really "see" in black and white.  It's so easy it sometimes feels like cheating.

My second learning about converting digital color to black and white is related to what I used to experience when I was a black and white print technician working on Sunset Blvd in Hollyweird, CA back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.  Exhibition quality prints we used to make for at the time famous photographers were nearly always creamy smooth/rounded in the high-tones and raised elevated in the mid-tones of a negative.

It's most definitely not sufficient to take a black and white negative, scan it and invert it to generate a positive image and call it done.  

The negative was always only part of the process, the starting point.  Further, if we stop at the black and white film negative, we're once again stuck in a sea of muddled yucky grays.  It's no better than performing a simple de-saturation of a digital file.  So how do we get around this and come closer to creating the tonal richness of old film-era prints? 

 

 

Following Mike Johnson's guide, open the "curves" function in your photo editor, grab the middle of the curve, and lift/raise it.  Watch what happens to your image and stop lifting/raising the curve when the effect is correct.  Here is what M.Johnson says about using this approach.

"...[It]increases shadow contrast, raises the often radically lowered middle values, and softens the contrast of highlights, all at once. This is just B&W Tonality 101..."

To cement this learning we can look at old prints and study their tonal ranges.  We can "calibrate" our eye to the "richness" of tones and expressions that can be achieved.  M.Johnson suggests browsing a site called "Shorpy."  Indeed, studying photos there can be educational and inspirational.

Once you "see" the difference between a muddle mess of grays image and beautiful tonal expressions you'll know what to do.  Just follow these two steps: 

1) Use luminance/human perception modeling to perform the initial conversion from color into black and white

2) Raise the mid-tones using the "curves" tool

 

Roasted, Toasted, Gunky, Gummy Hell ~ Nikon Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 AiS cleanup

The Nikon Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 AiS I recently picked up quickly developed a problem.  I suddenly had a set of oily aperture blades.

Quick as a bunny I went over to Richard Haw's website to read-up on how to disassemble the oil-stricken lens.  The process didn't look too bad, but decided to take it a step at a time.  I didn't want to make a mess of it by stripping screw-heads like I accidentally had on an otherwise nice Auto S.C.

By the way the rear mount came off the AiS I knew someone had been into this lens before.  The screws weren't as tight as they are coming from the factory.

Step one, remove the rear mount and assess the situation to see if something had caught in the spring mechanism.  After looking around I reassembled it and realized I hadn't solved the problem.

Step two, re-remove the rear mount and drop the element carrier out the front barrel to get at the aperture mechanism.  As M.Haw suggests, the 50mm AiS aperture mechanism is just like the Nikon Nikkor 85mm f/2 Ai/AiS.  Easy peasy, right?

Looking into the lens from the front I realized there was a larger problem.  The person who'd gotten into the lens had used WAY too much grease.  Perhaps the focusing mechanism had been stiff?  Who knows?  All I knew is there was grease in places there it had no business being.  It was everywhere!

I had an oil spill to clean up.  Call in the Hazmat Crew!! and gallons of ETOH, denatured, of course.  The natured stuff is best left for the photographer (me). Yes.  I'm being somewhat dramatic.  LOL!

After reassembly and working with the lens for awhile it appears I may have solved the problem.  Keeping fingers crossed on that, but if I didn't get it all, I know I can easily get back into the optic.

Here's the tale of the oil cleanup and aperture blade de-greasing in photos.

 

The End

Nikon Nikkor-N 28mm f/2 pre-Ai ~ field flatness and "sharpness"

Ok.  Once more.  With feeling.  

... and continuing with the series of posts on field flatness and "sharpness" I'd like to take a look, this time, at a Nikon Nikkor-N 28mm f/2 pre-Ai lens.

Here is what Richard Haw has to say about the lens.   

Here is what the guys over at MIR have to say about the 28mm optic.

I picked this lens up off That Auction Site for a bit less money than they typically trade for.  Fearing the description might've left something out, I was pleasantly surprised to find the lens to be in very good condition.  Optically it appears mint.  So, in short, a win for the Home Team.  Or something like that.

Setup - 

• Sony A7 - ISO50, 2 second timer, in-camera levels used to square the whole plot up
• Manfrotto tripod - it's capable of securing an 8x10inch view camera, so it's sturdy enough for this
  
• Lens - Nikon Nikkor-N 28mm f/2 pre-Ai (updated with factory Ai aperture ring)
  
• Rawtherapee RAW to jpg conversion - Auto-Match function, but nothing further (ie: NO Capture Sharpening) to minimize processing effects
  

Comparison - 

Here is the scene setup.  You can see we have new curtains.  Life is good, isn't it?

 

 

[As always, click on the image and look at it to 100percent file size to see whatever there is to be seen.]

 

 

Comments - 

The Nikon Nikkor-N 28mm f/2 pre-Ai behaves similarly to all the Nikkor lenses I've looked at recently.  The field is acceptably flat from wide open, even if the extreme-extreme corners go slightly soft.  One click down and everything is good, even to the very edges.  By f/4 the under-corrected spherical aberration is gone and this lens is as sharp as anything modern.

You'll know what I'm about to say, of course.  Nikon designed their lenses to create a certain out of focus rendition behind the point of focus by designing into their lenses under-corrected spherical aberration.  With very few exceptions, this rendering is consistant across the line of optics from the start of the SLR era right up to the beginning of the advent of the autofocus days.

This is why I am no longer obsessed with "how sharp" a lens is wide open.  In general, wide open is where I get to see what was on the mind(s) of the lens designer(s).  That's where I've found lenses with "character" strut their stuff.

As for using this 28mm f/2, it's slightly bigger than its sisters 35mm f/2 Nikkor-O and 24mm f/2.8 Ai.  Yet it feels good to use, once I got over the impressive Sony A7 + adapter + lens length.  It's not for the faint of heart.  

The overall length observation is where I've wandered down many an old rangefinder lens path to see if there might be something good which might help keep the overall kit size to a minimum.  Alas, no.  I've not come across anything that renders the way these old Nikkors do.  Modern AF glass lack the characteristics of these old lenses, so there's little to no help to be found there, either.

Like the three!!! Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 I recently acquired, I'll have to work with the 28mm f/2 for awhile to fully sort out if I like it, or not.  At first blush, though, it does seem to be a very nice lens.  It fits very nicely between the easily scene distorting 24mm and the pretty but sometimes too tight feeling 35mm.

As I said in the last post, stay tuned.  Photos soon.

Nikon Nikkor-N 28mm f/2 pre-Ai ~ ah, the insanity of it all

Just the other evening I enjoyed catching up on Rob Siegel's latest aventures in finding and haggling over old cars.  If we still lived back in the States I'm sure I'd be doing my best to keep up with Rob.  

You see, I used to be something of a motor-head.  Many cars came to sit in the driveway or take up space in the garage.  They all went after years of swearing "I'll start working on it soon" and finally giving up in frustration only to sell something on to some other poor dreamy-eye'd motor-head.

My driveways and garages have seen Renault R5 (two non-runners), Fiat X1/9 (a fragile but nimble crazy fun car to drive), Fiat 124 Sport Coupe (an absolute favorite), a Jaguar E-Type FHC 1964 (drove me to the poorhouse, that one did), a Jaguar E-Type OTS  1963 (I missed a bend front engine support from a prior wreck and it handled like a pig, even after I replaced the support), a Triumph GT6 (non-runner), a Jaguar XK150 FHC (disassembled non-runner), and a laundry list of motorcycles (some runners, many non-runners) too long and irrelevant to the point to list here.

My point being, if I'd just saved my monies and bought a properly cared for vehicle, I'd likely still have it.  No, instead I Bottom Fed knowing that I was squeaking by and feeling somehow justified that I was "saving money."  It was a false sense of economy.  I know this.

What does this have to do with lenses?  Well, it might help explain why I do what I continue to do with camera gear.

 

 

Now that we live in France I'm fortunate to not have a garage nor tools to make buying/selling old cars an option.  Yet somehow this isn't really very comforting.  When the itch hits it's nearly torture.  Only now, to stop the torture, I buy/sell cameras and lenses.

Lenses can be small, light, and take up only a shelf or two of closet space.  They are nearly ideal for scratching That Itch.  Except there's a somewhat constant flow of incoming/outgoing gear that I have to manage.  Fortunately I don't need titles and insurance papers to make a transaction like I would if they were automobiles or motorcycles.

Sometimes after working with modern auto-focus lenses and coming home from an event with over 6,000 images to choose from I get it into my head that I should downsize and replace all my old Nikkor glass with just a few select AF lenses for the Sony A7.  The ease and "directness" of using current AF tools frees me up to "see" rather than manage old camera gear and lenses while struggling to get the focus right.

Relatedly, I recently sold three lenses that I felt I could easily live without.  Two of them were Nikkor 50mm lenses of the classic 6 element 4 group double Gauss design.  I'd purchased them for a song, looked at them, felt that I'd figured out how they worked, and decided I needed to have a look at the 7 element 5 group Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 versions, of which I now have three.

This is a variation on That Itch of Buying/Selling.  I feel it perfectly illustrates the level of Insanity my thrashing about creates.  

I'd avoided buying a 50mm Sony f/1.8 FE for little money thinking that Nikkor 50mm lenses were cheaper.  Individually, they can be.  But with three of them (a single coated Auto, a multi-coated Auto, and a pretty AiS) I'm into f/1.4 Nikkors for just a tick less than twice what I would've paid for the Sony 50mm f/1.8.  I've just spent more trying to find something I like than I would've buying something new and perfectly serviceable.

Which leads me to an old Nikon Nikkor-N 28mm f/2 pre-Ai that's been Ai'd with a factory aperture ring that I spotted on That Auction Site.  

I'd recently passed on a very pretty Sony 28mm f/2 FE autofocus lens thinking that it was too much money to spend just then.  Yet, at 3/8th's the price of the Sony, along comes a f/2 Nikkor-N and I'm suddenly all giddy and happy at snagging it for much less than the usual going rate.

Ah, the joys of Hunting and Gathering.  It's something deep in my DNA.  There's no other way of explaining it to myself.  That habit is, by this point in my life, well baked into Who I Am.  Bizarre, isn't it?

 

 

After quickly confirming the lens resolution and field flatness I headed out to photograph a few automobiles as they checked in for the Rallye des Princesses 2022.  Photos soon, I promise.  There were more than a few pretty little cars that showed up and from the looks of things this 28mm f/2 is yet another wonderful Nikon optic.

I'm beginning to see a pattern, a design concept, if you will, for how manual focus Nikkor lenses are created.  There is a strong imaging family ressemblance shared between many of the pre-AF Nikon lenses.

The more I look at pre-AF Nikkors the more I feel they behave wide open very much like old Voigtlander Heliar 5 element 3 group large format lenses.  The Heliars are famed for their Soft Over Sharp rendition.  It can be a subtle and beautiful effect.  I'm more than a little surprised to find similar behaviors in lenses designed for 35mm film cameras.  The Nikon Nikkor-N 28mm f/2 pre-Ai is Soft Over Sharp wide open and renders very similarly to those old Heliars.

In general, when stopped down one click from wide open most of the Nikkors I've looked at become quite sharp and don't look any different to my eyes than current modern computer-designed AF optics.  I'll perhaps share some proof/confirmation of this in the future.

Even recognizing the folly and false economy of buying old unloved lenses, it's far too early to tell if I will chuck it all and go with full-AF lenses on my Sony full frame cameras.

2022 Photo Ops ~ Update Two

2022 isle de France Photo-opportunities - still very heavily weighted toward things I enjoy.  There are plenty of other opportunities here and around Europe.  Though I must say, the number of tourists arriving is nearly back to it's pre-pandemic crushing levels.

[I'm redoing this sequence and putting the completed events in reverse order putting the most recently finished events at the top.]

Tour Auto - 25-30 April *Did not attend*

la traversee de Paris - 27 March *CANCELLED at the last moment! Argghhhh*  but it was rescheduled - yea!!!

la traversee de Paris - 17 April *DONE* Photos Here!

Foire Photo - Chelles - 20 March *Did not attend* 

 

Retromobile - 16-20 March *DONE*  Photos here!

Salon International de l'Agriculture *DONE*  Photos here!

------------------- next up ---------------

Vintage Revival Montlhery - 7-8 May - the Beast will be there (the only surviving Fiat S76) *DONE* photos soon

Rallye des Princesses - 14-19 May *DONE* photos soon

Paris - Rambouillet avec les Teuf-Teuf - 28 rassemblement a Paris 7eme, 29 May a Rambouillet

Cafe Racer Montlhery - 18-19 June

le Mans Classic - 30 June - 3 July

A day in the life of a F1 photographer

Update 2 June, 2022 -

It appears that Sony knows the power of merging imaging, processing, and sharing.  The CEO is claiming that in two years we should see equivalent performace between stand-alone and cell-phones.  

I just looked at images I took at the Vintage Revival Montlhery 2022 event.  Comparing my Sony APS-C images to Motorola G8 Power I can see an enormous difference in quality.  The Moto images look synthetic and "water colory."  This reminds me of the early days of stand alone Point and Shoot small sensor'd camera output.  There's no comparison, really.  The Moto images are still a very long way behind the Sony NEX output.

However, if the IQ gap can be closed, really, honestly closed as Sony's CEO suggests, things could get really interesting, right? 

Update 27 May, 2022:

Having come from a time when there was an entire "eco-system" needed to make, process, and distribute a single image, the fact we can now do it all on our own is worth noting, no matter how much "gear" we need to do it all ourselves.  

Imagine how many people are no longer required to make it all work.  Film manufacturers.  Chemical engineers.  Print paper manufacturers. Materials procurement. Lab technicians.  Secretaries to manage/facilite communications.  Distributors.  Truck drivers to receive/deliver all these materials.  Plus all the overhead needed to keep the wheels on the track - first level, mid-level, upper level mangers. 

It's really quite remarkable, isn't it?  Maybe it's only remarkable to us old folk who "remember how it once was."  The whole system optimization is stunning, no matter one's perspective. 

 

Original Post - 

Some years back I had a lot to say with my friends about "wouldn't it be nice to have a Linux/Android OS-based camera where you could do everything on one device from image capture, through image processing, and then to image sharing?"

Canon and Nikon are not really "electronics" companies.  They don't have the expertise to pull off such a move.  But Sony does.  Yet Sony cameras remain pretty much standalone devices.  Perhaps they don't yet see the demand?

The cameras that offered Android "connectivity" back then were terribly slow on startup and slow in use.  These products understandably never really caught on.  

Yet, I still feel there is a strong place for such devices where the image capture is much better and much more flexible than current mobile phone tech.  The original problem of slowness had nothing to do with the Android OS and everything to do with the severely under-powered hardware it ran on.

Yes, everyone has WiFi, NFC, Bluetooth connectivity.  As you'll see in the following video this only leads to the need for more equipment.  It seems like the poor fellow is managing his technologies as much or perhaps more than he is making actual images.  Just look at the pile of computer "stuff" he needs to get his job done.  Quel bordel!

Moving the image capture device itself to a standardized Operating System would enable image processing, management, and distribution applications from a single, common location.  In short, everything could be done in camera, as it will have simply become a centralized compute device that happens to specialize in image capture.

Think of it this way - Say you're a working Formula One photographer and you're trackside shooting a few images.  What if you could snap a sequence of photos, select the one(s) you want,  pass it(them) through a color grader, and then post it with your comments to a website all in moment or two?

It could be an interesting solution, right?

Here is a hybrid solution that I use when wanting to avoid carrying the big laptop.  With my old Sony NEX and Ax000 cameras I WiFi or NFC connect to  a large screen mobile phone, select desired images, transfer them to the phone in just a few gestures, open them in something like Snapseed, process them, and send the results on.  This is a nearly manageable solution. 

In any event, have a look at all the support gear this guy uses. 

Shutter Speed: Trackside With F1 Photographers

I've written far too much about lenses and their various properties.  

 

Just last night my father sent me a couple videos about photographers and photography during Formula One automobile racing events.  These videos show how much more to photography there is than cameras and lenses.

Listen carefully to what Vladimr Rys has to say about working, the years to took to get close, and how he likes to work "cinema-graphically".

Komura Telemore 95 2x teleconverter ~ a quick look

Living where I do, I absolutely know much how fortunate I am to live in peace.  There is mental space and physical safety to do the things I want, like write these little amount to nothing important blog entries.  

Not everyone has this option these days.  We receive daily reminders of this fact and it's downright heartbreaking.  People are being killed for a man's out-sized sense of power, control, and entitlement.  I wish peace for everyone.

Here is what Peter Turnley has been doing in the Ukraine.  And here are some of his photos.

-------------------------

From time to time a person can find cheap, old, third party teleconverters that date from the age of manual focus lenses.  Vivitar, Soligor, Komura and many brands were sold as a way to double the focal length of a lens.

While in concept this might seem interesting and useful under the right circumstances, the old 3rd party converters had a bad reputation, even back in the day.

When I recently received a lens there was a Komura 2x Telemore 95 converter in the box, too.

I can't find anything about the first version of this converter.  Version II is reputed to be a 7 element device of fairly decent quality.  But since I know nothing about version I, I thought I'd try it out with a Nikon Nikkor-P f/2.5 105mm pre-Ai Xenotar-type lens.

 Setup - 

• Sony A7 - ISO100, 2 second timer, in-camera levels used to square the whole plot up
• Manfrotto tripod - it's capable of securing an 8x10inch view camera, so it's sturdy enough for this
  
• Lenses -
• Nikon Nikkor-P 105mm f/2.5 pre-Ai Xenotar-type
  
• Komura Telemore 95 2x teleconverter
  
• Rawtherapee "Auto Match"
  

Comparison - 

Here is the scene setup.  It's just a pair of closed gaze scrims in our apartment.  The details are interestingly small, so therefore useful for this kind of "wee look-see." 

 

 

[As always, click on the image and look at it to 100percent file size to see whatever there is to be seen.]

 

 

Comments -

The Nikon Nikkor-P 105mm f/2.5 pre-Ai Xenotar-type lens is beautiful from wide open.  It shows a slight softness at f/2.5 and becomes very sharp at f/4.

From years of looking at Nikon lenses by the hundreds, I swear they designed their lenses this way.  Just a touch of softness wide open and very sharp one click down all the way through to the smallest aperture.  

If I were a betting man, I'd wager dollars to doughnuts that Nikon understands the Japanese market better than anyone.  Wide open with under-corrected spherical aberration behind the point of focus gives a gloriously subtle, smooth effect that, apparently, Japanese photographers love.  With a few exceptions, the Nikon lenses I've looked at exhibit this kind of performance.

Adding the Komura Telemore 95 to the mix and we see that the corners suffer terribly until f/8.  The center looks somewhat acceptable from wide open, but those edges are horrible.  

 No wonder these have a bad reputation.

Nikon Nikkor-S Auto 50mm f/1.4 (single coated) vs AiS (multi-coated)

Living where I do, I absolutely know much how fortunate I am to live in peace.  There is mental space and physical safety to do the things I want, like write these little amount to nothing important blog entries.  

Not everyone has this option these days.  We receive daily reminders of this fact and it's downright heartbreaking.  People are being killed for a man's out-sized sense of power, control, and entitlement.  I wish peace for everyone.

Here is what Peter Turnley has been doing in the Ukraine.  And here are some of his photos.

-------------------------

In a prior post I compared the highlight color shift of a AiS version to a multi-coated Nikon Nikkor-S.C Auto 50mm f/1.4.  It appears the designs are different between the early S Auto and more recent AiS.  The color shift I saw was in the newer optic.

There's a small problem with the S.C Auto I have as the focusing ring is very very stiff.  So I bought a single-coated version for very little money in the hope that the focusing ring would turn correctly.  

The little lens arrived and the condition is better than I ever imagined.  The glass in this c.1972 optic is pristine.  The focusing ring turns smoothly and correctly.  The aperture blades are dry and "snappy."

With the S.C Auto out of action until I can drill out two retaining screws I  compare here the Nikkor-S Auto against the AiS version.

 

Setup - 

• Sony A7 - ISO100, 2 second timer, in-camera levels used to square the whole plot up
• Manfrotto tripod - it's capable of securing an 8x10inch view camera, so it's sturdy enough for this
  
• Lenses -
• Nikon Nikkor-S (single-coated) Auto 50mm f/1.4 pre-Ai c.1972
  
• Nikon Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 AiS c.1984
  
• Rawtherapee "Auto Match"
  

Comparison - 

Here is the scene setup.  It's just a pair of closed gaze scrims in our apartment.  The details are interestingly small, so therefore useful for this kind of "wee look-see." 

 

 

[As always, click on the image and look at it to 100percent file size to see whatever there is to be seen.]

 

 

Comments - 

Note: Please keep in mind I'm comparing single examples of lenses.  It's not like I have a deep repository of samples and examples of all these optics.  What I see in the lenses in my possession might not be seen in other people's copies.  And, as with my Lens Turbo II studies, not all effects are attributable to the primary optic.

The Nikon Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 AiS still shows a strong purple cast in the curtain from the extremely bright highlights at f/1.4.  At f/2 this strong purple cast appears to be much better controlled.

The Nikon Nikkor-S 50mm f/1.4 Auto, on the other hand, shows well controlled color shifts in the highlight to shadow transition areas.  It looks as good to me as the multi-coated Nikkor-S.C Auto.  When pixel-peeping at 100percent file size the overall image is a little softer to my eyes than the AiS version.  Though I don't show it here, the AiS sharpness advantage over the Nikkor-S Auto is gone by f/2.8.

Something I noticed recently is how similarly the AiS f/1.4 and f/1.8 Nikkors render.  Both show this strong purple cast in the bleed from highlight regions when shot wide open.  

 

 

If you look at the specific implementations of the plasmat design, both AiS lenses have elements 2 and 3 air-space separated.  The earlier/older Nikkor-S and S.C Auto design, on the other hand, have elements 2 and 3 cemented as a doublet.  I wonder what design trade-offs were made between them?  Did Nikon trade a bit of chromatic aberration off against improved resolution at f/1.4?

I also include a Rawtherapee "Capture Sharpen" comparison.  The softer Nikkor-S Auto looks really good and the AiS looks nearly "wickedly" sharp after a little "Capture Sharpen."  If you don't like the Nikkor-S softness wide open, here's a fix, though I would be careful.  I'm now leaning in the direction that "Capture Sharpen" might have an effect on the overall rendition of a lens by correcting some of the more interesting faults that give an optic their various signature characters.

It would be fair to ask why I'm going through all this trouble to try and understand what's going on.  One answer would be that I'm chasing pixies.  Another answer is a little more complex.

I really enjoy photographing vehicles.  In direct sunlight and indoors where pin-point light sources are often used, automobiles and motorcycles can have very strong specular highlights off of shiny surfaces and edges.  Of course I would like to avoid having to use chromatic aberration corrections in software if I can during processing.  So if I could select a "good" lens to begin with I will avoid having to take additional processing steps later.

 

 

Having chased my tail in circles around (currently) inexpensive, widely available lenses I've come to consider the idea that it might be interesting to shoot just one lens on one camera for awhile to see what happens.  

It won't happen, of course.  My other lenses would revolt for the lack of attention.  Besides, others have done a lot of this OL/OC/OY kind of thing.  

However, I will be using this old single coated lens for as long as it takes to see what it can do.  Someone who wrote about Leica lenses many years ago suggested it takes about a year of use before a person really knows if a lens is "good" and will stay in the kit or not.

Getting Old ~ the present state of things

Kirk Tuck writes about how difficult it is to keep "engaged" in blogging as the world around us changes.

I can see his point. If you're young and "connected" to the world through a mobile phone, you likely don't care nor even know about image quality, A to D bit depth, lenses and lens design, cameras, and all the things us old guys spent years trying to understand and master.  

 

 

No.  Likely all you need to do is point a phone at something, snap a comparatively low-rez photo, share it on social media (maybe passing it through a filter to make things "interesting"), and be on your way.  As I continue to age, perhaps the ranks of "cell phone photographers" will grow by a minuscule 1?  It's a little early to tell (though not by much).

It used to be that controlling the photographic process took years of learning, practice, and refinement.

I paid my way through the University of California (twice) by, in part, working as a photographer's assistant (weddings) and in B&W photo print labs (Irvine, and Hollyweird).  I picked up a lot of tribal knowledge, which included posing people, subject composition, processing chemistry, film of a wide variety, print papers from the world over, enlarging using all manner of enlargers and lenses, framing, and showing of finished works.  

Things could get extremely "tweeky" and esoteric.  Tri-X shot at ASA200 and souped in D76 (perhaps one of the greatest film/developer combinations ever, after the much more recent TMax100 souped also in D76), printed to extremely large sizes with even, in-focus grain edge to edge?  No problem.  Stand or semi-stand film development in Rodinal 200:1 to "fully process" the shadow areas for Palladium contact printing?  No problem.  Masking slide film to cut and paste, add or subtract images, and to control contrast or add colors?  No problem.

 

 

This is where I've gotten stuck.  I've narrowed things down a bit.  Now I enjoy older optics.  This is because I can't have a darkroom where I live and the old chemical film processes are beyond my reach.  But lenses?  If I pay close attention I can find brilliant things for attractively small prices.

I have several boxes filled with old lenses. I often use them.  They're very satisfying to me.  This mania stems from a time when I couldn't afford these jewels.  

It's kind of like never being able to afford a Selmer Mark VI alto saxophone and having to settle for a Conn or lesser Selmer model, or trying to scrape together enough money for a chopped Model A bodied flathead V8 hotrod, and later in life finding you have just enough resources to pull it off so you indulge yourself, in spite of the music and automotive worlds converting to electric.

Deeply and profoundly I know these skills and this knowledge are no longer useful nor very much appreciated.  Self awareness can be brutal.  Yet I continue to pamper myself in cheap old photographic glass. To make matters worse, I get bored and when that happens I tend to buy things, like lenses.  Particularly when there are fewer photo-opportunities. 

I've spent years writing about this stuff and sharing the little unimportant things that I've found.  That's it, actually, in a simple statement: These things are unimportant and increasingly so as time passes.

This is why, like many other old guys, I toy with the idea of just letting the blog sit in place, but to personally move on to other things.  What other things?  I have no idea.  Maybe I'll continue to post things until something different occurs to me.

Images with "impact" ~ do we care about which camera and which lens?

For this post I'm going to flip my normal "let's have a look at MORE equipment" approach to things on its head.  I'd like to talk a brief moment about the "impact" an image can have.

I recently visited an extensive retrospective of Steve McCurry's work.  The event was held at the Musee Maillot.  From the very start it seemed as if every image had a certain visual "impact."

It didn't matter what lens took which image.  Everything looked drop-dead gorgeous.

Yes, of course I'd read, like everyone else interested in this, where M.McCurry had used a Nikon Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 lens for some of his early portrait work.  Yes, of course I'd read, like everyone else interested in this, that M.McCurry travels light these days with a Nikon D-somethingorother and a 24-70mm f/2.8 and maybe a slightly longer zoom, too.

None of that mattered.  Everything looked, as I said two paragraphs ago, glorious.

OK.  If I had to pick a nit, I'd have to say the color saturation of his Kodachrome images is superior to his current digital imaging.  I've read where he deliberately under-exposed the slide film by 1/3rd to a 1/2 a stop to get that effect.  And when matched with the out of focus rendition of those old Nikkor lenses... oh... my...

The images in the show were printed quite large, too.

A person could walk right up and inspect the work carefully.  I did that and found the experience educational.  I could see where the out of focus transition zones were rendered with just a touch of what I'll call "delicacy."  Or perhaps I should say "deliciousness."

Then I would step back and take in the experience of the entire image.  I could consider the subject, the setting, the social circumstances under which his images were made, and the cultural "impact" his work has had.  I hadn't been this impressed by a body of work in many years.

When I lived and worked as a black and white print technician on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood, California I used to experience photo-shows in a similar way.  In this way I remember two shows, in particular, that impressed me in opposite directions.

The first was a Helmut Newton show on Santa Monica Blvd.  I was prepared to be impressed and to stand in awe.  Afterall, Helmut was very well known, but... the large prints were soft starting a 1/3rd of the way out from the center.  Every single one of them suffered this.  It was as if the show had been hastily thrown together and the organizers didn't care about the outcome.

Whomever printed them did NOT let the temperature of the negatives normalize to flatten out the material.  The center of the negatives were distorted by the temperature differential and the 120 format film grain, which should have been even and sharp all the way to the edge of the frame, wasn't.  The show was a huge disappointment to me.

An Ansel Adams show, at a different time but in the very same gallery on Santa Monica Blvd, did however impress me.  I could walk up to a print and inspect it closely and appreciate the detail and print technique.  Then I could step back and take in the entire image to try to appreciate on a different level what M.Adams had done.

I've since changed my mind about how I feel about St. Ansel's work, but at the time he was universally considered to be one of photography's greatest practitioners and contributors to the advancement of the craft.  I realize this is very West Coast photography-centric.  My friends and I had no idea what was happening in Europe at the time.

I still feel Ansel Adams was able to control his materials very well.  Lenses.  Cameras.  Process.  Print making.  Image interpretation.  The whole process had come under his control.

Certainly Steve McCurry's work is very different from Ansel Adams'.  It's M.McCurry's use of deeply saturated color combined with very compelling subject matter that impresses me so.  And it's clear to me he knows how to control his materials to get the most out of them, just like M.Adams did in a generation before.

Knowing the materials he used might deepen my appreciation of his work from a technique perspective, but even if I didn't know these things, it was very clear to me that I was standing before the works of a master.  

Rarely do I see us humans reflected in image in such a profoundly moving way.

Chasing Pixies ~ in the Real World

I've spent many years looking at various characteristics of photographic imaging systems.  

 

 

It started over 30 years ago with a question from a friend.  He wondered if we could use my USAF resolution test chart from Edmond Scientific to see how his large format lenses performed.  Kerry Thalmann and I looked at everything we could get our hands on.

After a physicist pointed out that "resolution" in common photographic use is really limited by the light sensitive materials (film, sensor) I turned my attention to understanding in to out of focus transition.  This, it appears, is one area where differences in optical design and implementation can be most easily seen.

 

 

Even more recently I've taken a look at how image processing software can influence the appearance of sharpness in an image.  Considering only the Rawtherapee Open Source Software application I've had a look at the detail enhancing "Capture Sharpen" function.

There is a lot to think about and learn.  I'm enjoying the journey.

At all steps I've tried to keep in mind how all these things relate to the real world of practical engaged enthusiast photographic craft in image generation.

In April 2021 while we were mid-pandemic Mike Johnson posted an article on the "Perfect Portrait Lens."  

 

 

Reading his article reminded me that I'd never fully explored the capabilities of 15cm, 21cm, and 210mm Voightlander Heliar large format lenses.  I'd owned several them over the years after hearing about how they were "magic" when shot at or very near wide open.  They had a veil of "softness" that overlaid a sharply rendered scene.  The "look" was distinct.

Heliars, along with Petzval, Verito, Darlot, Portland, Pinkham Smith, Gundlach,and Kodak Portrait lenses were considered by a small community of cognoscenti as the Holy Grails of the photographic optical universe.

 

 

Moving to Europe necessitated a serious downsizing of my collection of photographic materials.  Everything was sold at Fire Sale prices or given away to friends or the needy.  All found new homes except a pair of Canon DSLRs and Sony NEX5 (original) cameras and lenses that fit into a suitcase.

Now that I'm fully retired, settled in Europe, and have plenty of time on my hands (time on my hands? right! and if you believe that, boy! do I have a bridge to sell you) I've wondered if I could find lenses for my digital cameras that had the characteristics I enjoyed when I shot large format film.  I call it "chasing Pixies."

 

 

Taking everything I've learned and experienced thus far, and factoring Mike's comments on the "Perfect Portrait Lens" I finally feel I'm able to articulate in a clear manner what I'm looking for in lenses.  And more practically, I'm beginning to photograph in a style that hopefully has a stronger sense of coherency from image to image by selecting my cameras, lenses, and choosing specific processing steps.

Optical case in point?  Mike mentions the Nikon Series-E 75-150mm f/3.5 lens.  He writes -

"...In the 1980s, Nikon introduced a small series of budget lenses called Series E to go with the tiny EM beginner's camera. To Nikon's embarrassment, professional photographers began snapping up the simple 2X 75mm–150mm Series E zoom. The reason was simple: the lens had a smooth, pleasant look that made models look great. (Those were the days before Photoshop, of course.) It's not that it was unsharp, but it wasn't forensic..."

 

I just happen to have one that I picked up for shockingly little money and I've had a look at it over the years.  It's sharp from wide open, even at 150mm's.  Some people find this lens too soft for their liking.   Further, in the case of the lens I have, stopped down I can't tell the difference between it and my modern "wire sharp" lenses.

For me the "magic" is in the transition from in to out of focus behind the point of focus.  Nikon appears to have put some effort into making this lens perform well in this area.  It's only a 2x push/pull zoom.  Nikon made more than a few of them and they tend to be easily found.  This, I'm sure, is why mine came to me so easily. Perhaps people didn't really like them?

 

 

Of course I have to be different, right?  I'm looking to find and justify small format replacements to my old large format lenses.  So, to help prove to myself that this lens is "magical" in the ways I was looking for, I took it to the local farm show and deliberately shot as much as I could with it.  

The illustrating Sony A6000, Nikon E-series 75-150mm f/3.5 images here are from the Salon International de l'Agriculture 2022.  These were all shot at the supposedly worst, soft, ick! ack!! horrible, stay away from it!!! aperture - wide open.  I applied no, none, zip, zero "Capture Sharpen."  I adjusted the "curves" slightly and applied a G'Mic film emulation.  That's it.

I find it fun chasing Pixies.