Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/06/19
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Didier, certainly extremely smooth tones and gentle colour. By the way, your son is a handsome young man. Back to the lens, it's Noctish! Or Thanbarish! Not at all what I might have expected from a Nikkor. I confess that I'm not a huge fan of that Bo-ke as shown but that is entirely personal opinion and taste. Can't be well enough corrected for me! An awful lot of the gentle gender folk would be very pleased to have their portraits made with this. I just printed a Nocti shot (wide open) from Marty here on the AUS LUG of a pretty little girl. I thought that he had used a softar filter. Luckily he is still speaking to me. He may even still let me try out his M8. Sharp contrasty lenses are easy to find. I imagine that you will be preserving this one just as is, for this particular niche. Cheers Hoppy -----Original Message----- Subject: [Leica] IMG: Portrait of Orion 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 _______________________________________________ Leica Users Group. See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information