Richard Haw's Classic Nikon Repair and Review

Continued from Part 1…

There you are. I have split this blog post into two parts so that people one mobile devices will not have a hard time scrolling and loading everything as well as to give me some time to pause and take a rest (I’m only human. Flesh and blood, I’m made…)

Tamron:

Oh,boy! You guys are going to like the new Tamron lenses! Just check these out…

The Tamron SP 85mm f/1.8 Di VC USD is the only lens in it’s class. It is the world’s first fast 85mm for the 135 format to have VC. That thing (VC) actually works! The focusing is very fast as you can see in my video above.

It is also sharp wide open and contrast looks just about right. Some lenses of this class will exhibit low contrast when shot wide open with boatloads of chromatic aberration but this lens showed none in this picture. The rendering is pleasant to me and I actually like this better than Nikon’s new 85mm f/1.8G. The Nikon lens is considered by many to be one of the best 85mm’s available in the market. More

Hello, my dear readers and friends. It’s that time of the year again! I will give you an early bird’s account of this year’s CP+ in Yokohama, Japan. I only went to the exhibits that I am interested in so you will not find anything about Sony, Fuji or Canon in this post because these brands do not appeal to me in any way.

In my usual way of posting, this will just be a series of pictures accompanied by a short commentary. Some of the booths are boring (Nikon) but I promise you that the ones for Tamron and the rest will be worth the read so please read the whole article and I hope that you guys will enjoy it!

The exhibit opens at 10:00AM but 15minutes before that a crowd of old Japanese men and camera buffs from here and abroad can be seen forming at the entrance. I talked to some clerks at the camera shops and they told me that it’s the same old Japanese men that buy and spend money on cameras. Here in Japan, a typical hobby for retirees is fishing and if you have saved more money then photography will end up being your hobby.

Just look at that crowd and imagine if this was held in summer. I am one of those people who are allergic to body odour. The scent alone overwhelms my senses and I may pass out! More

Hello, everybody! It’s starting to get a lot colder now and the bugs have all crept back to their hiding places to wait for the coming spring next year. I love bugs, they’re tiny but their bodies consists of many interesting parts. I am always amazed by how intricate they can be, even a boring beetle has a few things that makes them interesting when viewed up-closed. Today, I am going to show you a little lens and just like bugs, it’s intricate inside and the construction is wonderful to marvel at.

Introduction:

The Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 Ai-S was sold from 1979 to 2020, it succeeded the then-aging line of 55/3.5 Micro-Nikkors which never saw any significant optical change for nearly 20 years. It’s a popular lens, it’s one of Nikon’s all-time best lenses so it was only discontinued recently, some 41 years after it debuted. It has a special place in Nikon’s lineup despite being succeeded by 3 other lenses. People sometimes require a simple, manual solution to their problems and this lens supplied that. People like scientists or engineers will require it for exact-reproduction. I won’t be shy to admit that this is one of my favorite lenses, if I were given a chance to only use a lens for the rest of my life I would probably have this on my top-3 list.

This is one of Nikon’s masterpieces, it works great with every Nikon. It has a compact barrel despite being a bit longer than its predecessors. Optically, it is quite good and many people use it for scientific and industrial purposes even today. Modern high-MP cameras won’t out-resolve it, it was made for reproduction so its resolving power is quite high.

Hello, everybody! I was hungry this morning so I opened the refrigerator to look for something to eat. I found an old sandwich from a couple of days ago. I reheated it in a toaster and it tasted as good, if not better than it was a few days ago. Reheating old food could make it taste better at times because fermentation helps a lot in breaking-down some of the ingredients. This is also true with lens design but instead of fermenting it benefits a lot from newer techniques in manufacturing, enabling an old design to get new upgrades and performing a bit better compared to the older designs. We’ll talk about one such thing in this article.

Introduction:

The New-Nikkor 55mm f/1.2 was sold from 1974 to 1977 and it was followed by the Nikkor 55mm f/1.2 Ai which was sold for only a year up until 1978. It’s an update of the older Nikkor-S.C 55mm f/1.2 Auto. Most, if not all of Nikon’s lenses received an update in the 1970s and were sold as “New-Nikkors“. All of them have new barrels, some even have newer optics or better coatings to make the upgrade complete.

Here it is with the Nikkor-S.C 55mm f/1.2 Auto which it shares a lot in-common with. The new barrel enables it to be mass-produced easier and cheaper without sacrificing quality and other things. The dream of creating a 50/1.2 for the SLR system was only fulfilled when the Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 Ai debuted.