So how does one reconcile 1 good shooting eye and 27 bodies and 50 odd lenses? Well, quite simply I can't. I just like collecting them, shooting them, playing with them. More importantly each camera had it's own specific lenses, and each brand made some spectacular optics.. And it's really the optics I enjoy. Which is why I own so many different brands. To the uninitiated amongst you, this is all known as GAS.. or Gear Acquisition Syndrome. As the name states, this is a disorder and I am afflicted with it. As afflictions go though, it is fairly innocuous, as long as you don't let it ruin your bank account! As there are some pretty expensive pieces of glass and bodies out there. Thankfully though the modicum of scotish and neopolitan blood I have coursing through my veins mean that I'm not attracted by the impossibly rare and ludicrously expensive items out there.. at least not enough to spend money on them! No, all my objects of desire are relatively attainable.. However that I have spent a sizeable chunk of money on them is true. Please oh please don't let me die and my wife sell my camera and lens collection for what I told her I spent for it! A similar line exists for cyclists by the way, who are also afflicted with Gas.. and another maxim as well.. the correct number of bikes one should own is N+1, with N being the current number of bikes owned. Again, the same thing applies to cameras and camera collecting.. So my search continues for the very perfect camera body and lens..
Except there is no such thing. Perfection is a state always strived for, but never attained. The Japanese are infuriating because for every new camera they build, they almost always put in some flaw. Canon does this by taking out a random feature that was in the previous model.. Wabi Sabi anyone? They are though in the business of selling consumer products, and they need our patronage in a year or two's time when their new batch of products is out. I however have jumped off that bandwagon, and prefer to buy their older models. Except for mirrorless. Yes, that new buzzword mirrorless..
Why? Well, quite simply because I can then use ONE body with all of my lenses.. And remember, the only reason I have all those bodies is to mount all those wonderful lenses! And again, as I said before, no single manufacturer gets is right all the time.. Each one designs a spectacular product once in a while, so there are many great lenses out there from different manufacturers. All you have to do is look.
Now in my search for lenses, I tend more towards portrait focal lengths, and seem to have a preponderance of lenses in the 50 to 135mm length (for 35mm film).. Obviously there are lenses that go beyond this range, but for some reason I seem to gravitate to that central bit of focal range. So here goes, a partial list:
- Canon 50mm f0.95 rangefinder lens.. This lens, built 20 years before Leica got around to building their Noctilux, was a technical marvel made to surpass the limitations of the film of the day, which couldn't go past 400asa and was grainy as hell. It was released in the early 60's and my copy was purchased by my father while working in Japan. If you wanted to take pictures at night, without using a flash bulb, then this lens made it possible. Today it is know as the dream lens. Later in EF (electro-focus) territory Canon again tried to replicate their earlier feat by releasing a f 1.0, still today the fastest autofocus lens on the block, though sadly discontinued. Nikon has gotten on the bandwagon in mirrorless territory with their Noct 58mm f0.95.. but.. always a but.. MANUAL focus.. Remember what I said about holding something back in their designs? Truly infuriating!
Photo on it's way - Waiting to develop my roll of film!
- Nikon 85mm f1.4 AF-D The portrait monster that sucks up light and looks oh so good on my Nikon D3s. It's a hard lens to use though, as focus is paper thin and more often than not an eyebrow will be in focus, and the eye not! So frustrating, but when it does nail focus, it can render some amazing images. Got to know what you want to achieve with it, as not every shot needs total fade to background! Sadly harder to use on Mirrorless because there is no internal AF motor, but with focus peaking it is still doable.. Supposedly surpassed by more modern designs that achieve greater sharpness at the expense of a cheaper and less durable housing. Anyway.. sharpness is overrated! This is another lens that will make it into the next century. Sadly we'll all have personao AI bots taking perfect pictures with their built-in eye-imagers..
- Nikon 70-200 f2.8E lens. Only one of 2 zooms that I revere. A truly spectacular lens with amazing sharpness. Satisflying sharpness. Does not miss a beat, perform badly, totally well behaved. Only annoyance.. can only use wide open on my film bodies. Then again.. WHY exactly do I buy fast lenses?! To stop them down while shooting!? Noooooo.. So actually, this lens does NOT have any flaws, even the previously mentioned one. But does it belong in this listing? Released in November 2016.. it is only 3 years old. So though not technically old, this is a lens that I will want to own in 20 years time (if it's still working). Thankfully it is built like a tank, weather sealed and a joy to use and notwithstanding it's heft, is manageable in the weight department. Obviously Nikon will release another in 6 years which will be better than this one.. but this one is so good I may not care!
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whewwwwwww..... Need to take a breath.. this is getting into a long post.. But.. What was the whole point I started with?! Oh, the afflction of GAS, and the first step in solving a problem was recognising it. However as I've gotten this far, I might as well admit that I DON'T recognise a problem here. AT ALL. I mean, what's wrong with collecting old lenses? It's not like I'm massively impacting the planet? If anything I'm sometimes saving lenses from going to the tip. Maybe those lenses though didn't quite make the grade in my list of "Best of".. In any event I'm not fuelling useless consumerism! Although the accessibility of these old (and optically quite fine) lenses is in part due to the consumer nature of our modern western societies. Which is sad. We humans are on a relentless persuit for newness and perfection, but sometimes we leave it behind. And that's why I search out for these old lenses, because perfection, or the striving of it, can be found in older things. Interlude over, back to the lenses..
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- Leica 90mm f2.8 Elmarit-M lens.. Released in 1980 and according to Ken Rockwell one of the best Leica lenses. He later goes on to state that it's the easiest focal length to design.. Bought this on a whim, and though it's small it is NOT light.. Very dense glass in there. At 2.8 subject separation requires work and correct shooting distance.. The lens is exquisitly designed and built, with integral lens hood, a nice leather pouch, and a very smooth focusing ring. The M bayonet mount is possibly the best lens mount ever, although Hasselblad comes a very very close second. Why the M mount? Because it has a very short throw to click the lens into place. Hassy gets second place because you have to contend with the shutter mecchanism which needs to be aligned with the lens (i.e. in the same state as in cocked). So good on you Leica for in 1954, before the F mount (1959) had worked out how easy it should be to mount a lens securely!
- Leica 90mm f4 Elmar-C lens released in 1973. What? 2 Leica lenses the same focal length and one stop apart. Are you crazy? Well, I do appreciate fast glass, hence the first Leica. But then I couldn't pass up a (relative) bargain, hence the second lens. At less than a quarter of the price of it's one stop faster brother, it is quite cheap, possibly Leica's cheapest M lens, although officially never meant for an M body, but rather the CL body made for Leica by Minolta. But of course it's an M mount so you can use it pretty much anywhere you want. It's chief attribute is it's lightness and it's compactness, and image quality is surprisingly good and surprisingly close to the f2.8. So why do I own both? I'll eventually sell one.. I just can't decide which one I'm keeping is all!
- Hasselblad 120mm f4 modified Petzar lens. Now this is a strange lens, and not the best optically. In fact it tries to recreate the wierd whirly effect of early Petzval portrait lenses, which were the first large aperture lenses evailable for large format cameas back in 1840. So a slavic engineer decided to convert old C Hasselblad lenses using modern optics that try to recreate an ancient optical design. The effect, when it works, is quite mesmerising. When it doesn't it just looks boring and out of focus. Just have to keep on experimenting though. Sadly no sample images, as the last roll I shot came out blank.. Maybe I loaded it backwards :-)
- Hasselblad 80mm f2.8 CF lens - probably my favourite of this brand, or rather my most used Hassy lens. Like the Mamiya above it is a "normal" focal length and mimics a 50mm for medium format, although comparisons with Hasselblad's 6x6 negative and 35mm film tend to understate the differences. We're talking about a square format, which until relatively recently Hasselblad touted as the "Perfect" format (until they started making digital backs with 2:3 aspect ratio). It certainly forces you to look at your image making in a different way (maybe the eye level viewfinder also helps in that regards!). I find I have to slow down and search for the perfect composition that will fit in a square box. Which makes the V bodies slower, but also more satisfying to work with. Although I called this a Hasseblad lens, the name inscribed on the lens itself is Carl Zeiss, a german optics maker. Hasselblad simply made the box and farmed out the rather more difficult task of making lenses to the Germans.
- Pentax 135mm f2.8 K mount manual lens. I've probably owned this lens the longest.. and since I started shooting Pentax in 1992, that really is a long time. I don't use it much today, but at the time it was my favourite portrait lens. All the advantages of a small lens, long focal reach, wideish aperture mean you can really make your subject stand out. Not particularly rare, but a gem of a lens that brings back some memories, and supremely competent at what I like doing best, taking portraits. the above image is a roll of Lomo 200ASA - wierd film - processed badly in Mozambique and converted to B&W. Still you can see the nice effect in the out of focus areas.
- Nikon 17-35mm f2.8 AF-S lens - A workhorse lens for me. The large aperture means that even though it is wide angle you can achieve nice subject separation with a bit of work and planning. It's optical design has probably been surpassed by newer lenses, and at 35mm the older O Nikkor lens for me does a better, or at least more interesting job. However I did say I'd mention 2 zooms in this list, and this is the second one. For autofocus work with digital it ticks the boxes, and it's an old lens to boot. The front element has a wierd aspherical nature which is truly bizzare to the touch, with a dimple in the middle. It is satisfyingly made of metal and wouldn't feel out of place in a war zone, and crucially takes 77mm filters, which means it works very well with my other zoom, the 70-200 f2.8. It too will be around well into the next century. Probably only as manual focus, as the motor will have given up the ghost by then, but everything else will work perfectly. Superceeded by newer designs, that won't last as long. Such is consumerism today.
- Nikon 24mm f2 AI-S lens - Almost forgot about this manual focus wonder... An old design, with heaps of distortion, although no moustache distortion like the 20mm Nikon that I couldn't stand.. Bokeh is average, but the wide aperture does allow for some fairly good subject separation.. It's really small, the focus throw is very short meaning focusing is fast. I really struggle between this lens and the 35mm O when I want wide angle.. In the end this does more landscapes and the 35 ends up working more with people.
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So when and how do I use all these lenses? Well as you've seen there's a mish-mash of older and newer lenses, manual focus and AF.. Basically whatever I'm trying to achieve photographically will have me reaching into different parts of my photography cabinet, grabbing different bodies and lens combinations. For street work in film I tend to have 2 kits - the F3 with the manual focus trio 35mm, 50mm and 135mm (or sometimes the35 + 105mm). If I want some autofocus then the F6 will come out with the 17-35 and 70-200. If I'm walking a lot though the F3 will get the nod as the manual lenses are lighter and a lot smaller.
If I'm shooting a wedding or an event then I'll bring along both the Nikon and Canon bodies (D3s and 1DsIII) and the primes (50 and 135) will go on the Canon and the 17-35 and 70-200 on the Nikon. That's quite a weighty combo, but with fast action covered by the Nikon, the more formal portraits will be done by the Canon. Although the stellar 70-200 will do some of those as well, especially as we reach the end of the day and the VR and higher ISO advantages of the D3s come into play. Events are fast action and so I'll probably just take the Nikon setup. Portrait sessions are a completely different story, because I'll throw just about every portrait lens I have at the subject, and see what looks best later.. When I need more compression the trusty 70-200 will be front and centre, although the two 135mm's, from Nikon and Canon also help in this regard. If I'm outdoors and can swing a nice leafy background then the Petvar Hasselbad will come out to play, and even the old Canon 50 0.95, as it too has a distinctive bokeh that works with distant foliage in the background. For clinically sharp headshots the 105 f2.5 manual focus Nikon still can't be beat. For more dreamy images wide open, the 85 f1.4 Nikon is the one I'll use, and if I need a bit wider the Canon 50 f1.2 will come out, especially if I need to nail focus and need to work faster than manual focus allows me. For situations that aren't repeatable (i.e. weddings!) you need to trust your equipment to get it right, and you need your equipment to be fast. It's unusual that I use two different camera brands, but they each have particular lenses that work for me. I could mount my Nikon lenses on the Canon (not the other way around), but the ergonomics of the Nikon bodies is just that little bit easier on the hand, whereas the Canon L lenses are superb, especially their primes.
Lens collecting is fun for me. The chase. Finally finding something. The negotiation.. When I, with bated breath, finally open the package... There's a certain thrill in the hunt. There's definitely a tactile connection between me and something that I feel has been made well, that has a certain heft, a certain volume, a certain feel. However I'm not just an idle collector, and these lenses all have work to do, and so ultimately they're here because they help me make some amazing images, or at the very least, give me pleasure while I TRY to make an amazing image.. lately it's more the latter. At least I'm still using them though..
Thanks to my boys who served as models for many of the images here. As you can see one son doesn't mind being photographed, whereas the other runs away every time I pull out the camera...
I'll add images for the remaining lenses as time goes on.
