Selection

Nikon D50 + Tamron AF 70-210mm f/2.8 SP LD lens made sometime between 1992 and 2003.

Photographed with a Nikon D700 and a Tamron AF 70-210mm f/2.8 SP LD lens. www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRwYQgk05DY

Maud, it is over. You can tell us now. (Brian Patten - 'Maud, 1965') AF Zoom-Nikkor 35-70mm f/2.8 lens. Nikon D700. Deliberately softened in post production.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5D lens.

Ecclesiastes 3:2. Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 AF-D lens.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 AF-D lens.

One of a series of these indomitable and undemanding garden flowers. Nikon D2Xs + Tamron 70-210mm F/2.8 LD SP lens, in production from 1992 - 2003. A very heavy lens which could be useful for self defence.

A detail of a bronze by Elizabeth Frink in Salisbury cathedral close. Fujifilm FinePix S3 Pro + Tamron AF 55-200mm f/4-5.6 lens.

Photographed at The Courts garden in Holt, Wiltshire. Nikon D700 + AF Nikkor 35-70mm f/2.8 lens at 70mm.

When I was eight, which is a very long time ago, Mrs Graves was our teacher in the village school. Mrs Graves was a Do Things person, as well as being pretty with dark hair and a nice smile. Mrs Graves set up an after school club about which I remember little except that it involved prolonging my exposure to Mrs Graves. On one of these club events we walked over a few fields doing the things Mrs Graves said we should do and eventually arrived at the place in this picture. Here we paused, sat down, compared notes, and I think had something to eat. Until now, I had never returned to this place. I had nurtured it in that special section of memory reserved for Super Things. Many places you revisit are something of a disappointment, but not this. It was a happy pilgrimage, a homage to the incomparable Mrs Graves, and her vitality and devotion to her work. Nikon D2Xs + Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 AI lens.

Photographed with a Nikon D2Xs and a 50mm Nikkor f/1.8 AI lens.

An extension tube between the camera and the lens enabled close focussing here. The Japanese Tomioka company made the Chinon 55m f/1.4 lens to a Planar design by Johannes Berger of Zeiss, which Zeiss never themselves used, having something similar which they considered superior. I bought the lens - still attached to a Chinon CX - from an eBay seller. It is engraved ‘Auto Chinon’ but in all other respects is identical to 55mm f/1.4 lenses badged ‘Tomioka’ which Chinon were supplying before 1974 when there was a change of ownership at Tomioka. The company was taken over by Carl Zeiss in 1974 and the name Tomioka was removed from the front of lenses being supplied to camera manufacturers. Tomioka was at one time the largest lens producer in Japan. It was more economical for Chinon, Mamiya Sekors, Ricoh, and others to buy from Tomioka than to manufacture their own lenses. In this they were not alone. Vivitar and Soligor, for example, never made lenses. They specified what they wanted, and various Japanese optical companies bid for the contracts. When sold new in the UK by Dixons the f/1.4 lens was available as an option to the normal f/1.7 for an extra £10 over the £69.95 usual price (I quote from a 1976 advertisement in ‘Amateur Photographer’). That was quite a premium and as a result the f/1.4 version is relatively scarce.

Photographed using a Helios-44 58mm f/2 lens fitted via an adapter to a Canon EOS 30D camera. The Helios-44 is a Soviet copy of the Carl Zeiss Jena Biotar 58mm f/2. And a lot cheaper.

Fujifilm FinePix S3 Pro camera.

When I was visiting Lacock Abbey, the museum had an exhibition of Tim Rudman's Icelandic pictures. Although they were unquestionably excellent, I found them stark. The frames they were in, on the other hand, were very interesting. Photographed with a Canon EOS 30D and an old Tomioka-made Chinon 55mm f/1.4 lens.

Shortly after taking this photograph, this bun, and two of its companions, were consumed by a glutton operating a Canon EOS 40D camera with a Chinon 55mm f/1.4 lens on an extension tube. f/4; 1/90th; 1600 ISO. Johannes Berger of Zeiss invented a 55mm f/1.4 Planar lens in 1957. But the design wasn't used for Zeiss lenses, because Erhard Glatzel invented a 50mm f/1.4 Planar lens, which was better. Berger's Planar, an asymmetrical double-Gauss scheme, similar to Nikon’s Nikkor-S Auto 50mm f/1.4 lens of 1961, was licensed to other manufacturers. Amongst these was Tomioka, a Japanese glass manufacturer. Chinon, who made cameras but not lenses, went to Tomioka for a standard fast lens. They got the 55mm f/1.4 (there was also a 55mm f/1.2 supplied in smaller numbers). In appearance, the 55mm f/1.4 closely resembles the more usual offering of a 55mm f/1.7 lens which came with Chinons of that period. Notably, the barrel is all-metal with a strip of thin leather glued on for a focussing grip. The standard of construction is good without equalling Leitz or Nikon quality. Because of the similarity in appearance, some suspect that the f/1.7 version was also a Tomioka product, but that is not proven, whereas the Tomioka involvement in the 1.4 55mm lens is pretty clear. Some of them even have the Tomioka name engraved at the front. Others are identical except for the absence of that information. The versions with the Tomioka name are appreciably more expensive to buy secondhand.