old to me

[perlmonger]

I have a new toy this week, or rather an old toy that's new to me: a gloriously manual 50mm Nikkor lens that's now sitting happily on my D70s. It's well travelled, coming as it did from spride in NYC, who in turn had it from DHM; my thanks and gratitude to both, because it's lovely.

No metering, so that's an iterative process of test shot and check histogram, starting from a guess that should hopefully converge with the desired end-state over time. My only focus aid (other than sadly failing eyesight) is a tiny green dot that appears at the bottom left of the viewfinder when the camera reckons the focus area is about right. It works, but holding the shutter half-cocked (to stop the display timing out) while focusing is fiddly. It's times like this that I really miss my old ME Super.

But it works, a damned sight better than the crappy kit lens (second iteration¹) that came with the body. And I need to think about what I'm doing with the camera, which is a very good thing: freedom and creativity are defined in large part by their constraints. I'll never be a great photographer, or even a particularly good one, but I know that I'm liable to take better pictures, all else being equal, without a zoom and automated everything doing my thinking for me.

Now all I need is to allow myself the time to go and actually take photos. The few I've taken by way of testing, I've uploaded to flickr

¹ second, because a few weeks ago I dropped my camera onto a concrete surface: it landed lens-first, onto the lens hood, which likely prevented damage to the body, but did the lens no good whatsoever - "sproing" is the operative word here, I think. I've inherited ramtops' old D70 kit lens, which she no longer uses.

Comments

[robsoft.livejournal.com]

Is this the 'Nifty Fifty' - the 1.8 one?

I have one too - it's awesome. Like you, I find it hard to handle the manual focussing - the little dot in the viewfinder is almost impossible to see in certain light - but the lens is truly wonderful and there's something 'honest' about taking a good photograph by manually focussing the lens. You start to think about position and composition more because often you have to physically rethink your shot, and move around the subject a little more. I found myself climbing over things, kneeling down or stretching around much more than I ever have done using the kit lens - with which it's all to easy to lazily point the damn thing and shoot.

This was the first 'separate' lens we have bought for the camera and it's been a bit of a revelation. Now I understand why people were telling me to spend the money on lenses more than the basic camera itself. I took it with me to London at the weekend, we left the kit lens behind (we have a lowly D40x, about 6 months old). At first it drove Nic mad but as time wore on I think she began to appreciate the depth-of-field effect - she took some nice photos at the zoo of ants, spiders and the like, with great blurry backgrounds and sharply focussed subjects.

We'll have to get them flickered and then I'll give you a link. I'm behind a client's rather feeble broadband at the moment but will have a look at your pictures when I get in tonight. :-)

[perlmonger.livejournal.com]

This one goes to f1.4, which is going to be useful at times (when I can deal with, or want, a depth of field of sqrt(FA) :)

[alicephilippa.livejournal.com]

I still have my ME Super, which has just acquired a powerwinder. Not that I've slung a film through it for ages. :(

[perlmonger.livejournal.com]

I've still got mine, with winder, but no lenses¹ and (worse) jamming internals. One day I'll get it cleaned and buy lenses. One day.

¹ a long story from the distant past for another time; lenses were the least of what I lost.

[spride.livejournal.com]

Glad it arrived in one piece. You will go Bokeh Crazy for about a month – just accept it and move through it. it has the smoothest and silkiest DOF blur ever - if you blow up specular highlights in the OOF regions of an image you will see they are perfectly circular, no hard outer rim or 50p-piece shaped shutter masking.

[stevewpalmer.livejournal.com]

My 50mm 1.8 version is my main lens. I recently got a second-hand D80 body and it auto-focuses the 1.8 (and will auto-focus the 1.4) which helps a lot as the green dot isn't very visible if the image in the viewfinder is particularly bright. Seems like the D70 is similar to the D40x and doesn't have the auto-focus motor on the body?

You'll love that lens. Despite having four others, I seem addicted to the 50mm 1.8.