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