[Leica] IMG: Portrait of Orion

[leica at screengang.com (Didier Ludwig)]

This is a portrait of my 8 yrs old son Orion, shot yesterday evening:

http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Didier/color/orion_nikkor.jpg.html

The reason why I post it is that I am positively surprised about the special 
character of the lens I used. It's a beaten LTM Nikkor 2.0/50mm I bought 
very cheap last year. It has has some minor, hardly noticeable haze, the 
barrels are very brassed and the aperture ring gets stiff above f8.

After some B&W test shots I was rather deceived - too much glow around 
highlights, and not much contrast. I thought I would have it CLA'd by John 
van Stelten one day and almost forgot it.

For luck I didn't sent it in. Yesterday I gave it another chance, in color. 
The sun was already gone but the sky still bright and the light soft and 
diffused. I shot that wide open portrait of Orion with the R-D1s, one meter 
distance, one picture only (because Orion hates being photographed, and I'm 
very glad he exceptionally smiled). 

After I opened the RAW file on the computer, I felt like having found a 
pearl in a mushroom. This lens has a unique, very natural (and thus 
oldfashioned) color rendering, and the softness, when not combined with too 
much contrast, becomes very nice for portrait shots in such light. The 
background bokeh is also very consistent. This lens will not be cleaned for 
shure! But it will see significantly more usage in the future...

Comments & critiques welcome as always
Didier