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Landscape Out my window Urban

Thursday March 12, 2015

NEW YORK NEW YORK – I’m xperimenting today. I bought an 85mm Nikkor P f2.0 lens on eBay; it arrived today so I decided to try it out. This is a famous lens. It’s from the mid-1950s. David Duncan Douglas was on assignment in Japan in 1950s; his Zeiss Contax 85mm lens developed a problem so in desperation he bought and shot with the Nikkor 85mm. He and his editors at Life Magazine were amazed at the quality of the images; the lens became a photojournalist workhorse and Nikon’s business took off. This lens is in a Nikon rangefinder mount, which is an approximate copy of the Contax mount. I have an adapter the lets me use Contax mount lenses on my Leica gear (an extremely exotic item) but the rangefinder doesn’t couple so I attached the lens to my Leica T which focuses through the lens. There is also an issue with infinity focus that the Leica T permits me to address.

The images are crisp with terrific micro contrast in the midtones. It’s sharp corner to corner by f4.0 – it’s quite impressionistic at f2.0. Bokeh is lovely. Today’s image is a test shot out my window taken with this impressive 70-year old performer mounted on my Leica T and converted to black and white.

Day 1,974 of one photo every day for the rest of my life.

Out my window
Out my window

On this day three years ago (day 878): Flatiron. Shot with a Phase One IQ 180 back on a technical camera.

Flatiron
Flatiron

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