You have probably heard about F-stops, a value that indicates how much light a lens can take in relative to the length of the lens. So a short lens with a large diameter has large maximum aperture (low F-stop number).
A good example is the 50mm f/1.8 G lens from Nikon – it has a maximum aperture value of 1.8 and hence a lens opening of around 50/1.8 = 28mm. Had the lens been shorter, say 35mm, with the same lens opening at the front, the maximum aperture would have been 35/28 = 1.25.
However, then light travels from the front of the glass to the rear, some light is always lost. There are many reasons for this – coatings is one – but lets for now just accept that as a fact. And then the F-stop changes in upwards direction as the lens lets in less light.
Where F-stop describes the theoretical light a lens takes in, the T-stop is at the far end of the lens, measuring the actual lights that gets through the lens. So T-stops has to be measured – it is no longer a mathematical relationship between lens opening and length.
If we take the example from before, the 1.8G 50mm lens from Nikon with an F-stop value of 1.8. When you look at DXOMark and their measurements of that lens, they report the T-stop value to be 2.0. In other words, from front to back light equal to 0.2 F-stops is lost.
Why should you care about this? First of all, if you buy a fast lens with a large maximum aperture, then my guess is that you do so also because of the ability to take in a lot of light to help you out in low light situations. If the benefit of a fast lens is diminished as the light passes through the lens, then my guess is that you want to know about it?
Photographers in general do not pay much attention to T-stop values. Videographers much more so. The reason being that when you shoot film or video, you often change lens during the same scene, and you don’t want to do a lot of post processing to even out the exposure, if the lenses you use have different T-stop values. So videographers naturally look for lenses that have common T-stop values. And in my view, the less light is lost from front to back, the better lens. I guess that is also why DXOMark has this as one of their key performance indicators when they present their findings.
All about Saul Leiter, texts by Margit Erb, Pauline Vermare and Motoyuki Shibata. The Ilford HP5 film just to give some sense of the size of the book.
Margit Erb apparently is the founder and director of the Saul Leiter Foundation, dedicated to preserving his art and legacy. She worked with Saul Leiter since 1996 and is instrumental in the production of a number of books about him. In this book consists of 232 images (paintings & images) and combined them with wonderful quotes from Saul Leiter. The book was originally created in Japan to accompany the exhibition Photographer Saul Leiter: A Retrospective.
The book is all about these 232 images and quotes. Only at the end of the book there are 3 short chapters written by Margit Erb, Pauline Vermare and Motoyuki Shibata. Other than that, it is only images and quotes. Just like I like a book about photography!
I simply looked at the world, not prepared for anything.
Saul Leiter.
And what images! Especially the street photography is where he shines as a ground breaking master of photography! I know he is famous for using colors where others use black and white, but I think there is so much more to his images than just color and the occasional sprinkle of red color that so many talk about: If you look at his framing techniques and how he used objects to block the viewers angle partly, plus unconventional positioning of his subject in the frame, then you start to realize how ground breaking his work actually was. And if you flip over to Instagram, there are so many photographers trying to do the same and (IMHO) not getting even remotely close.
It is not where it is or what it is that matters but how you see it.
Saul Leiter.
Saul Leiter did not like all the analysis of his work. In a video I watched on YouTube he was asked about how he saw the relationship between his paint work and his photography work and how if he believed his paint work had influenced his photography work. He stopped the academic questions and said “I am very suspicious of the analysis of art work…the explanation for certain things are not the real reasons for certain things.”. In other words, the more you analyze his work from an academic point of view, the less you enjoy the images.
In the same interview, he often says when asked why he did things a certain way or why this or why that, hen answered “because I liked them”, i.e. he was not driven by a certain agenda, it was much more simple than that. Similarly, when asked why he preferred the streets for his photography, the answer was “Things are going on! The street is like a ballet, you never know what is going to happen.”; much more preferred than a studio.
I have a great respect for people who do nothing.
Saul Leiter.
So to make a long story short: I love the images of this book! The book covers his early street photographs, images for advertising, nudes and paintings, but the street photography images are my favorite. I am sure that if you like street photography, then you will love this book and all the wonderful images and quotes.
Going up one stop means you double the amount of light that hits your sensor or film. Going down one stop means you half the amount of light.
You can go up and down in stops in the 3 dimension you know from the exposure triangle:
Shutter speed: If you double the time the shutter is open, then you go up one stop. If you change the shutter speed from 1/100th of a second to 1/50th, is the same as going up one stop. You let in more light because the sensor is exposed for a longer time.
ISO: If you half the ISO setting, it is the same as going down one stop. Say you are shooting at ISO 1600, then reducing to ISO 800 is the same as going down one stop. Increasing to ISO 3200 is going one stop up.
Aperture: If you change the aperture from f/1.4 to f/2, then you are going up one stop. Same if you go from f/2 to f/2.8. When you walk up and down the aperture scale in hole stops, you walk in steps of 1.41 (the square root of 2). This is not as easy to remember as the linear relationship for shutter speed or the doubling when it comes to ISO, but you will quickly get used to it.
What is the point? It is to give you a common language for changes to the exposure, irrespective of which dimension in the exposure triangle is changed. So to maintain status quo, you can go one stop up in shutter speed and one down in say ISO, and get the same result as before. This is a smart way to have a common language to changes to exposure, without knowing what the specific camera settings are.
Henri Cartier-Bresson Here and Now, by Clément Chéroux
If there is one photographer that every photojournalist or street photographer knows, it is Henri Cartier-Bresson (HCB)! This books takes you through all of HCB’s life: what event shaped him, who he met and was influenced by, his travels to Africa, Cuba, China, India, Spain etc, his work as a reporter for the Communist Press, how surrealism attracted him and influenced his work – the list goes on. Reading this book, you come to understand both how interesting a life HCB lead, but also the historical events that his images document and reflect.
I can’t figure out exactly why I find HCB’s images so stunning. There is obviously his mastering of composition long before all the rules were invented. And his talent for being at the right spot at the right time and on top of that hitting the shutter exactly at the decisive moment. But there is more to it than that. A touch of surrealism that adds a strange glow to his images that continues to fascinate me. No matter how much I analyze the images, the effect on me somehow escapes me just when I think I have it all figured out! And I guess this is exactly where a good photographer and a master of photography separate: the ability to make you look not only a second time, but again and again.
This book is a wonderful collection of 500+ of his images, and as a photographer looking over the should of a master, this is the part that I like the best. Others may find the story of his lift more interesting – for example how he 3 times escaped as a prisoner of war and later became a communist. And later decided to work for many years solely doing photojournalism. This part of the book I also enjoyed, but the pictures! I can wholeheartedly recommend this book if you find his work fascinating like I do.
PS: HCB is quoted for saying that: “In any case, people think far too much about techniques and not enough about seeing”. This remark is more relevant than ever, where YouTubers constantly battle to what extend photography gear matters and if the rule of thirds is to be applied always or sometimes.
I got my Nikon AF-S 85mm 1.8G lens over at mpb Europe for 334 EUR used – this was October 2021. The lens was rated by mpb to be in excellent condition, which in my experience is close to brand new! The same lens from new in Denmark is around 500 EUR, but mind you that here in little Denmark prices are per usual some of the highest in Europe. But still, I find that I save a lot buying used gear in good to mint condition.
Nikkor 85mm AF-S 1.8G lens
The first that I noticed when mounting the lens is how big it is in terms of circumference. It protrudes beyond the f-mount size significantly as the images above and below show. I knew the 1.4G lens is a “dramatic” lens in terms of size, but it surprised me that the same can be said about the 1.8G lens.
The 85mm 1.8G mounted on a Nikon D750
The lens does not have a golden ring on the nose, so apparently Nikon does not think this is a professional grade lens; my guess is they left this to the 1.4G lens instead. The body is made up of plastic, and the f-mount is metal as we know it. The feel and appearance of the lens is quite good considering we have left the days of “all metal, all glass and made in Japan”. This one is made in China.
The weight is around 350 grams which is super light, especially considering the lens volume. Although Nikon does not market this lens as weather sealed, I did notice that there is a rubber gasket on the f-mount, so at least dust will have a hard time finding way in between lens and body.
Speaking of the 1.4G lens, your question is probably why I did not buy the 1.4G? I would have loved that lens, but the price tag is around 3 times as much as the 1,8G! And although I love fast lenses, I simply could not cough up the cash to go for the 1.4G.
The lens comes with a lens hood of good quality albeit plastic, it takes Ø67mm filters and there is no issue with moving parts out front, your filter will be sitting in the same position as when you mounted it!
Here the lens hood is mounted on the 85mm 1.8G
The lens has no aperture ring – all adjustments to aperture are done via the camera body. There is only one button on the lens itself, and that is the auto focus to manual focus switch. The former can always be overruled by manual focus as soon as you start turning the focus ring.
I am happy to say that the focus ring works really well. There is no play as I reported for the 50mm 1.8G lens. The feel of the manual focus ring is not super smooth, but it works ok. The AF-S is as you would expect both silent and fast, but not the fastest Nikkor I have tested. But as this is mainly a portrait lens, maybe some street as well, I doubt that you would need blazing fast AF as you do for wildlife and sports. The built in AF motor allows you to use the lens also with AF on Nikon entry level bodies like the D3x00 and D5x00.
Minimum focus distance measured to 75cm; official numbers say 80cm.
The distance scale is there working from the minimal focus distance of 0.8 meters to infinity, although my own non-scientific testing showed that I could get 5 cm closer than that. They have even found space for DoF markings on the distance scale, although only for f/16. There are 7 rounded aperture blades, which is a bit on the low side, especially for a portrait lens where the bokeh per tradition is vital.
The lens comes with what Nikon calls SIC – super integrated coating, and the dampening of flare when pointing the lens to a street light at night is some of the best I have ever seen. The SIC is really sick, pun intended! There is no ED glass at all, so it is really a “back to basics” construction with no modern fancy stuff, but just good glass in a relatively simple construction.
Performance
This lens is sharp! You may have guessed that if you took a look at the MTF chart from Nikon or read other reviews, but it really is! Take a look at these two images from Lightroom measuring the center sharpness at 300%:
Center sharpness.
Wide open left (f/1.8) and stopped down a bit to the right (f/3.5). If you have seen other of my reviews, you know that I like to shoot a whiteboard with a few dollar and EUR bills to test sharpness and contrast, and when I can read the state names, then I know I am dealing with a very sharp lens. In this case I can read that NY is to the rightmost! The sharpness gets slightly better stopped down, but this is impressive performance!
Looking at the corner sharpness, it gets even better (still 300%):
Corner sharpness.
This is from the bottom left, and the performance wide open (left) is impressive! I may be able to see that it stopped down has slightly better contrast (look at the white in the EUR sign top left), but still this is some of the best corner performance wide open that I have ever seen! Well done Nikon!
And when you shoot at f/1.8 you really get a shallow depth of field! I know that f/1.4 or even f/1.2 will give you more, but still:
Out of focus elements – notice the cat to the left.
Same motive, but 2 different focus points: left the flower in the foreground and right the cat in the couch. Even when there is only 1.5 meter between the subject and your background elements, the latter gets rendered beautifully out of focus!
The bokeh I have found to be beautiful. When shooting wide open, the aperture blades are not engaged, and hence you of course get nice round bokeh balls, although the bokeh towards the corners tend to be more oval and shaped like an American football:
Out of focus elements at f/1.8.
I had high hopes for aberrations, but apparently I can get any lens to generate at least purple fringing:
Noticeable chromatic aberrations to the left.
Wide open to the left you can see purple fringing in the high contrast zones of the tinfoil. Not so much stopped down to the right (f/7.1). So there is a bit of aberrations and shooting streetlights at night (yes, a hobby yours truly practices) it gets noticeable – but I have always been able to remove it in Lightroom by pulling a few sliders. And speaking of streetlights at night, my test of flare showed that this lens has some of the best control of flare that I have ever seen.
The lens does suffer from focus breathing, so if you are considering it as an option for videography you may find that this is a showstopper. Especially when you ALSO consider how well flare and ghosting is controlled by this lens (videographers for some reason love this stuff and do not want to well dampened lenses in this regard).
In my reviews I don’t test distortion or vignetting. The simple reason being that you can fix this in Lightroom with a push of a button. Only for demanding architecture or real estate photographers can I imagine that distortion and vignetting would be a problem, and I am pretty sure they are not in the market for a 85mm.
Conclusion
Pro:
Super sharpness, both center and corners
Super contrast, both center and corners
Light – 350 grams
Ok build quality, albeit no gold ring from Nikon
Well working manual focus ring
Takes filters with no issues
Good handling of flare and ghosts
Price performance
Works on Nikon entry level cameras
Con:
Not the widest of wide – there is the 1.4G to mention an alternative
Some aberrations in high contrast areas wide open
Not for videographers (flare too well controls + some focus breathing)
AF not the fastest in the AF-S family
Not sure how long-term durable the build quality is
You probably have picked this up reading the review above, but I absolutely love this lens. It is clear to me that all attention has been given to the internals of this lens, and hence you get a “budget-feel” lens on the outside and a top performer on the inside. If you are to prioritize, then if you ask me, this is as it should be.
Right now, I cannot think of a lens where the price / performance ratio is better than this one when we are talking modern lenses (vintage lenses you buy on a flea market may have a better ration, but that stems from the price primarily). So if you need a 85mm prime from Nikon, this one should definitely be on your short list.
My only concern is if the lens will stand the test of time – will it survive the constant use in a demanding pro environment? I am not sure; maybe better to go with a gold ring lens if you are a demanding pro.
Visual flow, mastering the art of composition, by Ian Plant w/George Stocking
Ian Plant certainly knows a thing or two regarding composition, and in this book he and his mate George Stocking give us all there is to know about composition in this 287 pager PDF based e-book. The price is around 30 USD (October 2021) and to make the review short: I find that it is worth every dime.
The book is filled with great examples and lots of them. Albeit both Ian and George are landscape photographers, the principles are easily applicable to other kinds of photography. As you may have guessed when I mentioned the number of pages, the book is much more comprehensive than the usual presentation of leading lines and rule of thirds. Much more. There are many examples from both Ian and George’s own work, but maybe even better, also examples picked from classic paintings for both East and West.
There are a few things about the book that bugs me. Not senseless, but nonetheless:
The examples are supplied with elaborate text. Text that I feel compelled to read, but it is often the same text as in the body text. And I keep jumping back and forth between the body text and the text below the examples, finding it hard to ignore the image text, which constantly interrupts the flow and line of thought in the body text.
The first 150 pages are filled with remarks like “I will get back to this subject later” or something along those lines. Although it is a good tool for organizing the way things are presented, the sheer number of times this remark is made simply drove me nuts after mentioning number 20+.
I cannot really tell if it is a stack of PowerPoints that have been converted into a so-called book. I have a suspicion that it is more a presentation with elaborate text than it is a book as such I am reading. Maybe it is the format with me reading the text on a iPad that bugs me, but it is not a pleasure to read as many other books are.
And finally I am puzzled why people that knows so much about composition knows so little about text and how we humans like to read. The fact that the text is right aligned and the words hence do not flow equally positioned on the line simply makes it harder to read. Also the font is absolutely horrible – if you know just the most basics about how we read and recognize words (as images actually) you would never have chosen this font. This again gives me more a feeling of reading a PowerPoint presentation than a book.
So don’t get me wrong, it is a vital book about photography and I absolutely recommend that you get it and read it. But that these guys in terms of readability knows so little and makes so basic mistakes in their production of this so called e-book simply bugs me to a degree where I could not let it pass unnoticed.
I have always been a bit curios when it comes to Canon. Peter McKinnon and his delicious videos and images with a coffee color tint has always led me to believe that the Canon glass is a bit special. So, as a Nikonian, I decided to buy a classic Canon lens – the nifty-fifty FD 50mm prime – and of course a vintage one, to see how it would work out on my Nikon D750 DSLR camera body.
Canon lens FD 50mm 1.8 SC – a true vintage lens made in Japan
What I did not know at the time I ordered the Urth adapter is that adapters comes in two versions: one with glass that enables you to focus infinity, and another with no glass which unfortunately does not allow you to focus to infinity. Introducing an extra layer of glass is never good – it is one more layer the light has to travel through and the lens performance could be negatively influenced. Not so with the adapter without glass, but you may need to focus to infinity as part of your photography work, and then there is no way around the adapter with glass. I bought the one with glass more as a coincidence than an enlightened decision!
The Urth adapter of course sits between the Nikon camera body and the Canon lens.
I must admit that I was quite shocked when I started to test the lens and adapter combination when I saw the results shooting wide open (f/1.8). The image was covered by a slightly white halo, almost like the lens had been covered with a thin layer of Vaseline:
f/1.8 left and f/5.6 right.
Stopped down to f/5.6 the problem is completely gone and the image quality is as you would expect with a 50mm prime that has made the test of time – I think most will agree that the 50mm FD lenses from Canon offer excellent optical qualities for a fraction of the costs associated with a modern lens. But combined with the lens adapter that gives focus to infinity, the wide open shots are of unacceptable quality.
I then suspected the lens adapter from Urth, but googling a bit I could find YouTubers and other users that had tried the same type of adapter but of different brands and reached the same conclusion. So there is something about the concept or the design that does not work.
F/1.8 left, f/5.6 right. Notice the line between the cat and the carpet in front of the cat.
I also tried to put the lens+adapter on my Nikon Z50 – and APS-C camera – just to see if that would help, as it uses a smaller part of the glass. The answer is no – I got exactly the same result wide open on the Z50 as I did om my Nikon D750. So there is something about the adapter design that simply does not work wide open.
What to do…
My take on this is that you have these options:
Buy the adapter with the glass that gives focus to infinity, but don’t use the lens wide open; always stop down a bit for good results
Buy the adapter without the glass and work around the fact that it will not focus to infinity
Buy the adapter for a Nikon mirrorless (say a Z50, Z5, Z6 or Z7). The flange distance on a mirrorless camera is different from a DSLR, and hence the adapter comes without glass and you can focus to infinity.
Don’t try to adapt Canon glass to Nikon bodies – use Nikon with Nikon and Canon with Canon.
Which one works for you is of course a matter entirely dependent on your decision criteria and personal preferences.
This is probably as academic as it gets! If you want to learn the basics about photography like exposure, composition, etc, then this book is not for you at all! The title is to be taken very literally.
It is an interesting read. You really understand how much goes into interpreting a photograph. Maybe not your ordinary picture of your pet or your new car, but a picture used to document the death of Che Guevara, or the first day in the camp for the Rwandan Tutsi and Hutu refugees.
The chapters do not make up a nice red thread. Instead, it seems like a collection of articles that take their own angle irrespective of the other chapters. Analysis of an an image. Tribute to a photographer. Meet and dialogue with a photographer. Sometimes it is an analysis of a specific picture, other times a photographers work.
It is not an easy read. It is super academic. I will not claim that I understood all that John Berger writes, nor that I read it all. It is simply too demanding for little me. Consider yourself warned.
Symmetry is about balance. It is one of the more extreme versions of balance, but about balance it is. You can both use symmetry as a way to position your objects in the frame, or it can be given to you by the subject you are photographing.
In architecture symmetry is used as a tool to signal power and influence. You will see that many government buildings are symmetrical like the Danish parliament below. This is what I call left to right symmetry, as it is symmetrical over a vertical axis:
Danish Parliament, Copenhagen, Denmark
You can also find it in many other kinds of buildings like a library with a Harry Potter feel:
Trinity College Library, Ireland
Symmetry can also be top to bottom, i.e. the axis over which the symmetry works is horizontal. Reflections are the classic example of top to bottom symmetry:
Lake reflections on a quiet morning. Lyngby, Denmark.
And finally you can combine the two to give you symmetry both vertically and horizontally, a model mother nature often uses:
A rose with early morning dew.
But we human beings also like this kind of symmetry:
Tiles in a floor in Milano, Italy.
So what is the point with all this? When you start to become aware of symmetry within the images you see, you will notice symmetry and the effect more and more as you study other photographers work. This is a great way to enhance your skillset and build symmetry into your composition toolbox and hence start using symmetry in your own work.
Symmetry, like rhythm and repetition, makes the image more likeable and pleasing, and that may be exactly what you need to make your photo work. But be careful with symmetry: a little is great, too much is boring in the long run. So use it sparingly.
It shows what human beings can do to each other in a warzone. It is not pleasant reading, but Danish photographer Jan Grarup has never been a crowd pleaser.
The table of content gives the scope of the locations that Jan has photographed over the years: Kashmir, Sierra Leone, Chechnya, Rwanda, Kosovo, Roma, Ramallah, Hebron, Iraq, Iran, Darfur, Central African Republic, Afghanistan, Gaza, Haiti, Somalia and Mosul. More than 400 pages in coffee table book size, filled with black and white images from the horrors of war. People killed, people on the run, people in despair, people crammed together in refugee camps. Weapons, corpses, soldiers, dust, blood, poverty.
Jan has been a warzone photographer his hole life. And he has paid and continues to pay a high price for his work. PTSD to mention one. You can’t dispute Jan’s capabilities as a photographer – every image is carefully selected, the composition is impeccable, the technical quality of the images is from the top shelf.
In the foreword Jan quotes Dr. Martin Luther King jr. saying “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people, but the silence over that by the good people.” – I think this sums up the mission Jan is on: to wake up the good people.
PS: I don’t think this book is available anymore from new. With a bit of good luck you may find a used copy. You won’t get mine. Good luck hunting.
PS: It is a BIG book. Even for a coffee table book sized book, it is bigger than most: 39cm tall and 28 cm wide, and with a weight around 3,2 kilo!
