So my fixation with lenses continues. This time these are longer than the usual focal lengths.
In the distant past the usual lens selection for a photographer was for 35mm shooters – 28mm; 50mm and either 85mm or 135mm (or both if you were rich). A medium format kit would typically be a 50mm; 80mm; 150mm and a large format 5×4 shooter would have 90mm; 150mm and a 210mm ( if you want to read even more about how 5×4 lenses were used and how the modern equivalants for digital are used there’s more here and here).
If you’re still following, all of these lens angles of view (apart from the 135mm on 35mm film) are virtually the same. When photography became even more popular, 1970 and 80s camera companies and independent lens manufacturers started to make more extotic focal length lenses. Before anyone writes in, I know longer lenses were available for press and other organisations, this is just a general overview of how working photographers spent their hard earned cash.
Longer and wider lenses became more cheaper(?) and available. I’m just as guilty as the next person for my lens choices over the years. My 35mm lens choices included 16mm; 17mm; 19mm; 21mm; 24mm; 28mm; 35mm; 50mm; 90mm; 135mm; 180mm and a 300mm!!! My medium format lens of choice were 50mm; 80mm; 110mm; and a 200mm. My 5×4 choices were off the chart 65mm; 90mm; 105mm; 150mm; 180mm; 300mm and just to show off a bit, for 10×8 I had a 165mm and a 300mm.
Hang on, this is starting to read like I’m showing off on how much money I’ve spent (wasted?) on lenses, so lets get back to what this upload is all about.
The images below show a Nikon 300mm AF f4 lens made between 1987-2000 (I’ve done other long lens uploads before – my mirror lens Journal entry is posted here). I purchased this as a smaller 300mm lens to carry around rather than my usual 300mm AF f 2.8 lens which I usually use for or the odd sports job or speaker events – allowing me to stay further back from the subject and where often the lighting is not ideal.
So the 300mm f4 I’ve been using with a selection of lens converters I’ve owned for years and very rarely used, I have a x1.4 manual converter, x1.7 and x2 AF converter. These attach to the body of the camera. You then connect the lens to the converter and this increases the focal length of the lens by the times factor of the converter. A x2 converter makes a 300mm lens a 600mm. The trade off is a little light loss, so the aperture value of the lens decreases – for example a 2.8 lens could become a f5.6 lens. Also if you stop down a bit it keeps the image quality a bit better.
As a test I recently noticed a spiders web in the garden. This was a great subject to test the quality and detail the lens and converter combination could produce. I know this is a website (cob-web-site, I’m a comedy genius!) and the re-sizing of the images are far smaller than what the camera can record however, the resulting file was really impressive.
The next three images are a view I spotted a while ago. I just had to wait for the right time and weather conditions to make it work. For the first two, the lens combination was the 300mm f4 with a TC-14B 1.4x converter. I find it amazing how much the image is compressed when using a lens that has a focal length 420mm. Also, the distance to the bridge from where I was standing was nearly half a mile away! The final image was a bit of a ‘why not’ moment. I used a 500mm mirror lens (more about this lens here) with the TC-14B converter which made the focal length of 700mm (you can see the doughnut highlights around the lamp posts). I wasn’t expecting image quality to be as good but considering how old the lenses are and the distance these lenses are ‘looking’, the images are truly amazing.
Seeya soon mb
