I didn’t start out this way – ok, I cut my teeth on a Contax IIa with a prewar collapsible Sonnar.  But despite the name, f/2 is not fast.  But I soon found myself using a Nikon F (FTn) as a teenager.  I liked it.  I liked it far better than my Nikon 6006 – my first AF body and the only body I’ve lost and never looked for – eventually using a Sonnar type 105/2.5 Non-AI because I could MF a long thread portrait lens faster than the 6006 could screw drive an 85/1.8.  And it was good.  I, like many, started on Tri-X, and aside from an odd dalliance with an Ilford here and there,  I embraced the whole T-Max family.  But TMZ was my baby.  And I would push and pull it… almost to the point that i have to admit that the 400-3200 range and usual 1600 settings on my 5DII seem oddly familiar.

I was a speed addict, but I didn’t know any better with no one to teach me. While I would use the 50/1.4 Nikkor-S from time to time, I figured that the 55/3.5 – my third lens option until the until my AF era – was pretty much the same… plus MACRO.  It made no sense to use the 50/1.4.  And I didn’t.

To be fair, I wasn’t alone : Bjorn Rorslett laments the change in optical formula on the non compensating 55/3.5 (K type, single coated, if you must know).  So (the) hoi polloi had been doing what I thought was a brilliant idea since the late 60s; I have some pity on my 16 year old self.  Furthermore, the deep recessed element was easier to protect sans filter… and looked cooler.  But f/3.5 is f/3.5, and even at EI3200, it was not good.

As I fell in and out of photography, my minimum fast aperture dropped… when I stopped shooting in my early 20s, it was 2.8.  When I picked it up again in 2004-5, it had widened to f/2.  In the last year – and with good cause, I (obviously) think, an f/stop that doesn’t begin with a “1.” is a luxury, a shamefully deep DOF to cover hip shooting, and the beginning of marginally useful when encountering situations where f/1.2 at 3200 nets me exposures 1/10-1/40th long, even with my usual -1 exposure compensation.  Which is a nice segue to the point of all this:  after years and years of lust, I have succumbed: in September, direct from Hong Kong, a Noct – a Noct Nikkor – with all its hype and handpolishedness entered my life.  

Now mind you, I have a number – and that number would be significant – of 1.2/1.4 lenses in full 35mm format and some example of every Nikon normal focal/aperture combination (I returned my Nikkor AI-P copy – for being too slow):

5.8cm/1.4S (Several)
50/1.4 S (Several)
55/1.2 S 
55/1.2 SC (AI converted, but the flange tabs were damaged so it went back)
58/1.2 Noct (Chosen over two tested AIS copies for the better build and long throw)
50/2 AI
50/1.2 AIS 
50/1.8 AF-D (China)

Technically, I also own Nikon’s other 1.2; the Nikkor-O 55/1.2 CRT/Oscilloscope lens.  Being in an extended M39 mount with a rangefinder type flange focal distance, it is reserved for use on my GH1 and not relevant to this use.  Additionally, and far more relevant, I own a 58/1.4 Cosina Voigtlaender Nokton in Nikon AIS mount, the CV 40/2 Ultron in both Nikon and Canon mount (it is that useful), a recently acquired Sigma 50/1.4, plus the C/Y Zeiss 50/1.4 Planar and several Pentax M42 offerings, along with some others.

If the point of this post were to list my lenses, I would just point you to the Google docs list.  The point is that not only do I have some very considered and clear opinions on the *use* of the above lenses (there are no good lenses, just overpriced ones) of which several are in common rotation in the middle position of my typical three lens kit (and the Ultron can also play wide angle if I take a 58mm lens) but I am in a unique position to offer some feedback on the Noct, especially relative to the other 1.2 Nikon offerings.  The other 1.4 options must be considered, and I own many of them; notably absent is a 50/1.4 AIS and any AF version of the same.  In any case, my feelings are a little different than conventional wisdom on these lenses – but there is nothing wrong with the conventional wisdom for conventional (read: most) shooters.  

I will write a full comparison, but there is no reason to keep you waiting: if you’ve ever been squeamish about stopping down from f/1.2 to f/1.4, or if f/2 has begun to feel like f/8 – and espeically if you have forgotten that f/8 exists, if your lighting situation is often one where no method – CDAF, PAF, manual by prism, or manual by live view is a crap shoot, do not pass go, do not buy the Canon 50/1.2L (not owned, but I did try several), get a Noct.  Practice your focusing skills.  I shoot my Noct wide open from the hip. I shoot it in venues where hip focusing might be more accurate than using a visual method. There is no reason that reliable focus cannot be had for all but the darkest situations or fastest subjects – and no, people are not that fast.  Stop making excuses and look at the viewfinder – watch how things come into focus.  I’ll save that for another post… or a book.

Now, if you want to shoot at f/1.4 get a 50-58/1.4 of whatever rendition style meets your fancy. Neither 1.2 is particularly “better” than its contemporary or subsequent offerings at 1.4, with even the “modern” 50/1.2 AIS suffering notable SA in daylight situations until f/2.  The 50/1.2 AIS is just a disappointing lens – for me.  It has better “technical” characteristics than a 55/1.2, but is pictorially inferior at any aperture that matters with these lenses. I do not think the more controlled SA and higher contrast were worth the cost in bokeh quality.  The 55/1.2 is charming and very bright.  If you are shooting f/4 and smaller the 50/1.2 is the better option.   If you are doing that, you probably want to look at the sturdier and cheaper 50/2 or again, a 1.4 for an extra stop if needed.  

The later, multicoated 55/1.2s are better than the earlier models – and I never say any lens is “better,” but in this case, its just a matter of it being brighter (I would prefer to test t/stop values but this is my rough experience in having reviewed my 55mm samples today) while being otherwise identical in character.  I have read others’ preferences for the earlier S version, preferring lower contrast.  I may feel that way about the 50/1.4 S against later lenses, but I’m not seeing a material difference – especially if you shoot for the dark/Lightroom as I always have – that would merti forgoing the benefits of MC elements.

The 5.8cm 1.4 is wonderful, just wonderful – if you know how to use single coated lenses – and is second only to the Noct in terms of frequency of use, not just in this class of lenses, but my shooting overall.  I own several copies and will probably collect more samples as stock of 48 year old lenses can only decrease.  I really have found the 58mm FL to be perfect for my eye.  It’s sad that there is only one readily available option here: the CV Nokton 58/1.4.

More to come.

Also, I plan on actually shooting off comparisons of these lenses (I’ve done this before, but never with a plan, just a tripod and a lamp (as a subject)) to confirm my opinions, and I have no problem in correcting myself.  But the broad strokes are on –  you probably dont need a 1.2 lens and for you the Noct is just so much hype – unless it isn’t.  The 50/1.2 is boring and functionally dubious when choosing what to carry.  The 55/1.2 is undervalued and has a distinct charm, with later versions offering the most flexibility.  The 50/1.4 Non AI have charm as well, albeit different, and the 5.8/14 perhaps the most charm of all – and entirely different in its optical formula when compared to all the offering (excluding the very modern designs).  The 50/2 is the best technical option.   I’ll cover the non-Nikkors another time – and the Sigma and Zeiss (C/Y Planar, I do not know anything about the modern ZF/ZE version other than some poor feedback, displeasure at the Cosina reality, and my general skepticism of the branding, fueled by owning and comparing both a C/Y and ZF 25/2.8 Distagon) are of particular note.

A simple tutorial for a girl I know who asked me the question above – and I didn’t have time to answer cause there was so much to say and she was tired and overloaded and everything.   Time to answer.

I never have enough of that one.

Ok, so you get back from your photo shoot… and all your pictures look orange.

WTF?

In the old days, you bought film and made choices.  You would choose film speed (ASA/ISO, and perhaps DIN if you were a Nazi or are collecting Social Security), film size (35mm, 120, etc.) negative or slide, color or black and white.  If you chose color you had another choice – what type of light would you be shooting under?

Our brain makes things we know to be white look white under a range of lighting situations.  Film doesn’t have a brain. See, if you were outdoors, there was a film to make a pure white subject look white when lit by (midday) sunlight (5600K); if you were indoors, you could choose film balanced for Tungsten B lights (3200K) and even, and rarely, Tungsten A (3400K).  In an ideal world, our indoor lighting would be at the same color temperature-

-wait. I’m not going to get into the physics here, but you do need to know something about “color temperature” – and this is all you need to know, at least to start.  Those numbers above are in Kelvin (absolute temp= Celsius + 273.15). What heat has to do with any of this is not important.  You just need to remember the following five things:

1. Sun = 5600K
2. Cheap, powerful inefficient lights (Photofloods) = 3200K
3. Expensive, powerful efficient lights (HMI) = 5600K
4. The lower the number (temperature), the redder, and yes, confusingly, “warmer” the color
5. The higher the number (temperature), the bluer, and yes, “cooler” the color

Now digital is awesome, because the sensor doesn’t actually see color, so we can make it up as we go along.  We can tell the sensor what to consider white, and then it figures out the rest of the palette from there.  Not only do we not have to worry about having the wrong, uncool film (pun mildly intended) in the camera, but we actually can balance for any temperature light source – not just the three options from the film days (and don’t ask about multiple light sources with different temps in the same shot.  That’s for later.)

But.

This is all well and good – important stuff to know – but your model still looks like a tangerine.  In all your shots.  And she’s already gone home or out to party with the band and do blow.  There is no reshoot.  You accidentally set the camera to shoot for something like daylight, but you were using cheap continuous bulbs from the hardware store and don’t even know what color temperature they are.
You are fucked.

Maybe not.

Now, the following steps will work with JPEG and RAW images, but it is far better to do this with RAW images.  There is no quality loss, and if you have to fix the exposure (because of human vision relating certain colors to luminosity) there is much more latitude and shadow detail to bring back.  For our workflow, we’re going to be using Adobe Lightroom (version 2.7 here), because we want to fix an entire photo shoot’s worth of images.  Photoshop is better suited for in depth correction of a single picture.  We’re going to fix all the shots perfectly – no estimation or guessing – in about one minute – assuming we took one simple precaution.

We’ll get to that.

Let’s have a look at our orange model.

Pretty, ain’t she?  But even she would agree that while warming filters are flattering, she is plenty orange enough without the help.  In fact, not only was this shot screwed, so was this:

Hell, the prima donna  won’t even look at us until we have this taken care of.

So, let’s fix this.  See, we were careful and using a color balancing card in one test shot.  A 18% gray card would be fine, and another method could use a white card.  (Yes, I was going to do both as you might notice from the Lightroom screenshots, but it’s 3am now [edit: 4:50am])  Gray cards are traditionally used for establishing a exposure level for a section of the image with a reflective (often a spot) meter, however, as they are color neutral and fairly standardized (there are other mixes of gray, but 18% is the traditional choice),  you can use them as the basis for color balancing.

In Lightroom, this is very easy.  Below is a color calibration card set; there is also a pure gray only card, but this is fine – the colors are printed on a 18% gray background.  That’s all we’ll need.  This is a fancy card with at least four ways to do color balance.  Forget that.  This method will work on a $2.49 card.  (In other words, you need this and cost is no excuse.)

Ok, great you took this shot.  So you can fix this picture because you have a neutral tone that you know. “Wonderful,” you say, “but I need to fix all the shots.  Even the ones with different exposures, lighting angles, and with no pretty calibration card sitting the frame.  What now?” Well, here’s the thing.  Your camera was set to 5400K (warm daylight type fluorescent bulbs).  There was only one source of light in the room – an incandescent light of unknown color temperature.

Since there is only one type of light source, the difference between what your camera expected and what was there is exactly the same in every shot lit by the lamp.  If you needed to drop the color balance by 2,550K (which you will in this example), then all the shots need the same correction, regardless of how much light actually was reflected in the scene and regardless of the color of what reflected it (sorta, but again, that’s for later).

So to clarify – if your camera thinks the white is cool (a high number) and it’s warm (a low number), we’re going to be subtracting.  How did I know that I was subtracting 2,550?  And isn’t this is taking way longer than a minute to explain?

Well.  Now that you know the problem and you have taken the one precaution YOU WILL ALWAYS TAKE IN EVERY SHOOT, that is, YOU WILL ALWAYS HAVE A SHOT WITH THE MODEL HOLDING (AT LEAST) A GRAY CARD WITH EVERY LIGHTING COLOR CHANGE, the rest is very quick.

We’ve imported our shots into Lightroom and from the Library, we see the problem in all it’s ginger glory:

Ok, so we see we have the important shot right there – a card with our preferred neutral color, 18% gray.  We click on it, and then go to Develop in the top right corner.  This will open up that image alone and give us more and finer tools to use.  When the mouse hovers over the image, it turns into a magnifying glass. We click on the part of the picture with the card to zoom in.  Now, on the right, you’ll see the Basic (very top) panel is open, set to Color (default), and there is a circle with an eyedropper.

Click on the eyedropper.

Now, that the mouse has turned into an eyedropper, we can move around and see the effects of picking various tones as the white balance point in the preview in the top left corner. We just want things “normal.” So, find the most even sample of the gray in the card that you can:

And just click… and:

Now, that looks right.  But I said we would fix all of them in a minute, and even if you went slow, I should have 30 seconds left. More than I need.

While still in the Develop section on the picture we just fixed, right click on the picture (either the big one you just worked on or the small one in the filmstrip), and find Develop Settings/Copy Settings and click…

Now we are going to take the important development change we made here (the white balance) and copy it.  Hit Check None at the bottom and then check the White Balance box (not suprisingly, the very first option, from an English reader’s perspective).  Click Copy.

Now that we have the change that we want, the rest is pretty obvious.  Go back to the Library View (top right corner) and select all the pictures that were from the late night photo shoot.  Don’t worry if you have the “fixed” picture in the selection.  We are going to paste a calibration number, not just “subtract” a number from all of the images (but that is the practical effect).

Now we just do what we did to copy, but instead choose paste –  right click on any of the selected images and find Develop Settings/Paste Settings and click…

And just like that-

Our model has her fluffy white hair back in every photograph… and is now ready for you to mess with her colors, but as you choose.

Addendum:  This is the most basic and simple method to get a decent working white balance after the fact.  There is always a gray card around, but it might not be perfectly neutral (though this is more common with the rise of digital cameras).  Color panels and white/gray/black card sets exist for a reason.  I use one of these. I have that with me at all times.  If I know I’m going to really be doing complicated color work with time to set up, this bigger and more versatile card is a lot more flexible (and my colormeter might come along).

You know, I was tempted  to entitle this post “Supergood,” but that would have been too much the cliche – whether or not it has been used to describe Superbad, which I just saw.  Somehow it smacks of the trite wordplay I expect from the Post or the Daily News, neither of which I care to emulate.  Moreover, it’s just not true -  the movie was good, better than expected of its genre, but still, it dragged at times.  It did have me laughing out loud at moments, but not nearly as much as I expected from the trailers.

Incidentally, I have to get mp4s working under Debian more reliably.   More on that later, in another post.

Back to the flick.  Worth seeing.  Serious kudos are owed for a film which makes all three of its objets d’lust brunettes.  In doing so, it avoided an idiotic cliche; not all men prefer blondes, yet still prefer women.