Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/06/19

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Subject: [Leica] IMG: Portrait of Orion
From: hoppyman at bigpond.net.au (G Hopkinson)
Date: Tue Jun 19 04:29:59 2007
References: <20070619110544.203AB2FC08@donald.hostspirit.ch>

Didier, certainly extremely smooth tones and gentle colour. By the way, your 
son is a handsome young man.
Back to the lens, it's Noctish! Or Thanbarish! Not at all what I might have 
expected from a Nikkor.
I confess that I'm not a huge fan of that Bo-ke as shown but that is 
entirely personal opinion and taste. Can't be well enough
corrected for me!
An awful lot of the gentle gender folk would be very pleased to have their 
portraits made with this.
I just printed a Nocti shot (wide open) from Marty here on the AUS LUG of a 
pretty little girl. I thought that he had used a softar
filter. Luckily he is still speaking to me. He may even still let me try out 
his M8.
Sharp contrasty lenses are easy to find. I imagine that you will be 
preserving this one just as is, for this particular niche.

Cheers
Hoppy

-----Original Message-----
Subject: [Leica] IMG: Portrait of Orion

This is a portrait of my 8 yrs old son Orion, shot yesterday evening:

http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Didier/color/orion_nikkor.jpg.html


The reason why I post it is that I am positively surprised about the special 
character of the lens I used. It's a beaten LTM Nikkor
2.0/50mm I bought very cheap last year. It has has some minor, hardly 
noticeable haze, the barrels are very brassed and the aperture
ring gets stiff above f8.

After some B&W test shots I was rather deceived - too much glow around 
highlights, and not much contrast. I thought I would have it
CLA'd by John van Stelten one day and almost forgot it.

For luck I didn't sent it in. Yesterday I gave it another chance, in color. 
The sun was already gone but the sky still bright and
the light soft and diffused. I shot that wide open portrait of Orion with 
the R-D1s, one meter distance, one picture only (because
Orion hates being photographed, and I'm very glad he exceptionally smiled). 

After I opened the RAW file on the computer, I felt like having found a 
pearl in a mushroom. This lens has a unique, very natural
(and thus oldfashioned) color rendering, and the softness, when not combined 
with too much contrast, becomes very nice for portrait
shots in such light. The background bokeh is also very consistent. This lens 
will not be cleaned for shure! But it will see
significantly more usage in the future...

Comments & critiques welcome as always
Didier








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In reply to: Message from leica at screengang.com (Didier Ludwig) ([Leica] IMG: Portrait of Orion)