"Back In The Day"....We Built Systems

In my childhood and teenage years, while I waited with anticipation, each month's photography magazines (as much for the ads of gear that I could only dream about), I planned and plotted as to which lenses I would own.....when I grew up. Funny thing is; I still do that, but instead of dreaming, it's more methodical planning. In the intervening 30-35 years, life and inflation happened. According to the various online money calculators, that painfully saved $100 of cash is the equivalent of almost $650 these days. So those, $150-200 Pentaxes, Mirandas, Canons, and Minoltas of 1970 would cost roughly $1000-1300 today. The next step up, "baby Nikons", high-end Canons, or relatively inexpensive German cameras would be in the $1500-2000, range with the "F", Leicas and such running into the $3000 area. 

No wonder people shelled out the money to buy expensive aluminum cases such as Zero Halliburtons to protect their prized gear. Although the prices in actual dollars don't seem to have changed all that much in that time, our perceptions of them have. In those days, when an engineer or accountant shelled out that much to buy a camera, he expected it to last a life-time and perhaps pass it on to his son. Yes; I said "he" and "son" since photography in those days was almost universally the province of men. In today's Walmart'd society, we're thrilled to have something last more than 3 years physically and usually, by that time, it will have been discarded, sitting forlornly in a closet or garage sale. Therefore, people don't go to great lengths to create a "system" and protect it.They might shoot a Nikon DSLR this year, but switch to Canon the next, because they have a new model with some neat video features that they might use, then in a couple of years have moved on to Sony or Samsung because those new mirrorless APS-C cameras are so cool and compact!

I'm a dinosaur, if not in equipment, in perspective and philosophy. I thought long and hard when I decided to switch from Pentax film cameras a few years back. I weighed the pluses and minuses of Canon and Nikon while reading a ridiculous number of commentaries and reviews both on the web and in magazines. Ultimately, I decided to go with Nikon because they had the lens I wanted (18-200mm VR) and their company philosophies fit mine and my idiosyncrasies. 

This is one of them. Nikon never changed their SLR mounts. To this day, they still use the "F" mount. Which means, barring any of the nebulous coupling lugs and what-not, any F-mount lens will fit any F-mount body. Now, you have to watch for things like; intrusive rear elements that might break a mirror that hasn't been locked up, or pre-Ai/non-converted lenses that might break the coupling lugs on your newer camera. But the mount itself.....that'll fit. I LOVE that! Make of it what you will. I don't really care. Am I going to run out and buy a drawer full of old glass? I probably would if I was a retired millionaire, but no, it's not in my plan. 

However, there are a few pieces that fit my "system", and the fact that they are old, or manual focus, whatever....is not relevant to me or doesn't effect my intended use of them. We'll start with some I already have. The first is this an older, non-Ai (auto-indexing), 50mm f/1.4. It has been converted to Ai so functions fine on modern Nikon bodies. It also has been "chipped" meaning that it has the CPU and contacts which send and receive information from the digital Nikons. The 50mm focal length roughly translates to about 75mm on my DX (APS-C), D300 body making it a nice portraiture lens. Not only is manual focusing a non-issue on this VERY bright (1.4!) lens, but it take all the other automated adjustments from the camera just due to the CPU. Oh yeah; it was free. My brother sent it to me as the result of one of his many projects......Bonus. If you don't have an unusual and generous brother, this lens will run $100-150. Yeah, that's about $15 of 1970 money!

You might ask yourself, why I would have/want another lens in the same focal length range? Yes, this is a 55mm, Micro-Nikkor f/2.8 making it a comparatively slow 82mm lens. Well; it too was free. Yeah, you guessed it.....another of my brother's projects. This one was half-finished in-so-much as he bought it at a great price because it can hardly be focused due to the weirdness of a lubricant that seizes up after a 20-25 years of use. Imagine that! Anyway, I dropped it off at a local repair place and they are replacing the lube at a cost of about $65. Probably worth that, given that it's a true macro lens versus a lens that focuses closer than some others and thus has "macro" put in the name. No, it's not chipped, but since it's Ai already and will meter couple with my D300 as long as I put it into the camera's bank of manual lenses, I'm good. Given that's it's job is to shoot things such as flowers, and bugs, I'm not going to be overly concerned that it has no electronic coupling with my D300. I know, this is a bonus that just showed up in the mail, otherwise, I wouldn't have pursued it. But if I was a macro photographer, the common price of around $100 makes it worth looking into, particularly if you don't have to shell out to have it re-lubed.

Then we have this; a 500mm f/8.0 catadioptric mirror lens. Of course, mine isn't this Nikkor that's depicted, but the concept is the same, and if I get a few things out of the way and have the time, $$$ and inclination, I'd like to swap my Tokina for the Nikkor since it's much sharper and has significantly more contrast. Of course, those differences might have something to do with the $1000 or so difference in original prices! All in all, I'm going to say that I really like the Tokina. It's well made since it was purpose built with a fixed mount, vs. the many cheap-o, T-mount mirrors out there. It's main purpose is to sit here and look good while awaiting it's occasional excursion out to shoot wildlife or zoo trip. Apart from that; I'll have to admit that I only have it because it's cool and it costs about $35 after the seller refunded me half the price due to fungus on the glass.

If I was really a serious user, I'd have bought the Tamron SP/SPII, the Perkin-Elmer made Vivitar Series 1 600mm (or 800mm), or the aforementioned Nikkor. These 3 have advantages ranging from collectability and/or top-notch performance.....for a mirror lens that is. You can see from the upper image how compact the 600mm Vivitar Series 1 is sitting next to the a 55mm f/3.5 Nikkor. If you want to see the size of the Tokina on the D300, please refer to my "Mirror, Mirror" post: 

http://frugalpropellerhead.blogspot.com/2013/04/mirro-mirro.html

It really balances very nicely on that camera, especially when it has the battery grip attached. 

So, on to the lenses that I don't have and are planning/plotting to acquire. The latest to grab my interest is this; the 300mm, f/4.5 Nikkor. There are a number of different versions of this lens, however, as typical for me, I've focused (pun partially intended) on one, the 2nd version. The early "P" (Penta) version referring to it's 5 elements, aren't very sharp, besides being non-Ai which would require conversion, so it's eliminated. The 3rd version which is "IF" for internal focusing not only had that feature, but is considered to be among the smallest of the focal-length and speed, thus are more sought after and consequently making them more expensive. Which leaves the middle-child 2nd version, one of which I watched sell for $66 yesterday on eBay!

What's my purpose for this lens other than that it's a bargain and very sharp? I have a gap between 200mm (300mm, eq.) and the 500mm (750mm, eq.). That's a pretty big hole, besides which the 500mm is a mirror and thus a bit of a specialty lens, plus at f/8 is quite slow. So, a 300mm with a 35mm eq. of 450mm that's pretty bright at a constant f/4.5. Then you consider that it's an actual "normal" lens with controllable f-stops and it's relatively compact size that doesn't over-power the D300 (as you can see): these things are a bargain at the sub-$100 that they can be found at. But it's a manual focus lens, you say! OK. First of all, I'm not a professional shooting sports for my livelihood or I'd be looking for a 300mm, f2.8 AF lens....which costs a lot more money. And secondly, I'm an old photographer, meaning that I've spent most of my life focusing lenses, not some 20-something who hasn't focused much of anything ever in their life. Plus, really; less than $100 for classic Nikon glass!?! Do I need to go further?

Then there's this. A 28mm. The image above is an Ais, Nikkor version, that tends to range anywhere from $85-90 to over $150. They are really sharp lenses, there were lots of them made so they aren't terribly expensive. That 28mm converts to something like 42mm on the DX cameras I use, so just a little wider than what would be considered normal. Why would anyone with a typical kit lens like the 18-55mm or a super-zoom like my 18-200mm want something like this? Well; look at it. Even this larger Ais is quite compact, and that the (unremarkable for it's day) f-stop of 2.8 is fast compared to the 3.5 to 4.5 that the kit zoom is, at that focal length. Do I really want to spend the $100 or so for this lens? I don't really see myself using it on the D300. That 42mm focal length is an informal, "walk-around" lens. Do I really want to walk around (meaning with no specific purpose in mind) with a D300?

Probably not. What would I use as a walk-around camera then, that I could attach a good walk-around focal length lens? Well, I've spent the last week or so rationalizing my switch from my current Nikon D50/Panasonic GF-1 combo to the D40. So there you have it. This then takes me to the next line of reasoning. On a DX camera, there's going to be precious little difference between the Nikkor Ais lens, versus the significantly smaller, and cheaper Nikon Series E lens. These sell in the range of between $50 and $75. Adding a $30 Dandelion CPU chip to it gives you something that electronically couples to a D40 making it an almost perfect walk-around combo.

Even professional who make a living using their cameras don't have anywhere near this gear. Maybe some well-heeled collector who buys up all the stuff in "pristine" condition, then puts it away in a case does. But that's not what real people do. What we do, if it's something that we actually use and have real jobs with real families with real expense, is to use logic applied to costs, projected use and availability to create a system that we can use.