Retro Lens Meets Ice Storm 2013

I had a bit of a convergence yesterday, as "old" met ice. If you are here in the U.S., or at least in the southern part, we experienced winter storm Cleon. I know, for you Northern European readers (particularly) Russian, it wouldn't qualify as being "news worthy", but here in "the South" (land of the eternal 100 degree temps), it's a big deal. Interestingly, the coming together of the warm moist air with the arctic temps created this: ice encased everything. So out I went with my camera onto the "tundra". It was really very cool and made for some fun photography. 

Lucky for me, I had virtually the ideal instrument for that in the D300 with the manual focus 50mm f/1.4 Nikkor. It was perfect because of the relatively close focusing capability, the wide aperture so I could control what was and was not in focus, and most importantly, the manual focus. If I would have been using one of my regular AF lenses, I'd have probably had to switch over to manual anyway since much of what I was trying to shoot required me to pick and choose one particular spot to focus on within a jumble of other stuff around it. Basically, that, which auto focus still doesn't do all that well and won't until they are actually able to connect the camera to our brain! I was happy as a clam while I could hear my wife over there with her "point & shoot" getting increasing frustrated with her camera's AF.

Now that we're on the subject, let's talk a little bit about this lens. If there were no other reasons for being a Nikon shooter, this one would be almost worth it in and of itself. Not even discussing the fact that it's ridiculously sharp, and that it's f/1.4 gives it the ability to control the depth of field that any photographer would prize; it's remarkably small and light when you're used to carrying today's "kit zooms" that cameras generally come with. Yes, you are stuck with sneaker-zooming, but that's not as difficult as you might think. That thing that makes this such a great lens for today is that, if you use anything but, the entry level Nikon's, your camera still meters with it! That's as long as you get one that's AI (auto indexing) or has been converted since that system came out in 1977. I'd bet that tens if not hundreds of thousands of these thing have been produced since then, so they are cheap. On a good day, you should be able to pick one up on eBay for around $100 (give or take). Mine is actually a pre-'77, non-AI version that's been converted, then had a CPU chip installed. But, these work great on a D200 and up camera just fine without the CPU. In fact, I've seen plenty of old non-AI lenses that have been converted by cutting and filing. It doesn't look that great, but if you have an old one from a relative, or cheap off of the internet; it can be done. No, this lens is not the great f/1.2 Noct., but it also doesn't cost you that extra $400-500 for that extra half stop and the aspherical element either!

I shot this image at 1/1600 of a second, f/2.8. There was no cropping or adjustments of any kind made on it. I'm not sure I'm good enough of a photographer to discuss Bokeh, but I think the out of focus areas are pretty good on this and is a good example of why it's a good lens to have for the money. I'm really looking forward to shooting the kids with this lens next time we go out to the Dallas Arboretum.

 Here's another example shot with that lens. If you'll pull this picture up to full size, you'll see that the middle of the focusing grip the lens is sharp, but the camera, and even the front of the lens is already out of the depth of field! .....and that's with an f/8 aperture! Which brings me to old equipment number 2. About a week ago, I found this lens, a Tamron, Adaptall 300mm f/5.6 on eBay. These older Adaptalls are not very popular on the used markets. I believe that they just aren't as well know, but like most lenses of that day (early to mid-70's), they tended to be smaller and lighter. As it turned out, I was the only bidder at $9.99, with $4.99 shipping. I thought that I remembered that they were pretty compact and the 58mm filter thread would indicate that as well, but wow! I was not prepared for how compact it was when it was attached on the D40! Love it! Hopefully, you now see what I meant in the last post when I was ranting about lenses that are size-appropriate for the camera....especially when it's main "stock-in-trade" is it's compact size.

On the same day (Thursday), that the Tamron 300mm showed up, this did as well. A Vivitar 283 and the original matched grip/bracket. This was in fact the rig that I convinced the school to buy way back in my high school days. It's big and heavy, but in lots of ways, it's actually easier to handle than having a giant flash sitting on the hot-shoe. I paid $20 (less than $30 after shipping) for the whole thing, so it's kind of a fun deal that didn't cost much. Some of them had camera-killing trigger voltages, so I'll have to test it first. At the moment, I can't, since my multi-meter's battery is dead and it uses one of those weird, tiny 12v batteries. So I have to wait till one of those old Radio Shack multi-meters that i bought off of eBay shows up. It was $15. My intention is to get my buddy Pat to make me a micro-switch to go where that remote shutter release cable goes through the grip, and put a 2.5mm jack in the back. That way, I can get one of those really cheap "1N" Nikon 10-pin adapter cables off of eBay for $1 and be able to control the camera from there. Plus if I use a Nikon iTTL coiled cord (about $10 on eBay), I'll be able to take my Nikon flashes "off-camera" for about $20 total expenditure. These old grip/brackets made back in the 70's are really amazing. They were upward of $100+ back in those days so are made like something that would cost between $400-600 in today's dollars. No I don't expect myself to go running around like a press photographer from "back in the day", but it's fun to be able to do that for very little money expended.