Every time I’m enjoying the parade preparations, it’s a pleasure for anyone found of shooting colorful portraits.
Within all costumes used to celebrate the new year, the red color is the main tone, then come pink and yellow.
This year I had on my D80 a nice oldies : a 1970s Nikkor 85mm f2 AI-S, that was lent to me by a friend to let me test it on my dslr.
Indeed these Ai-S lenses are operating fully manual on a D80, that means no AF, and most of all no light metering by the camera. So I just took 2 shots in situ to adjust my speed, aperture and ISO, thanks to digital era I could check immediately through the lcd and histogram which adjustments to make, and I was ready for 2 hours portraiture within the crowdy parade characters.
I must say beside the slower ability to shoot due to the time needed to adjust focus (the D80 rangefinder requires much more time to be sure to have focus than it used to be with a film camera or a professional dslr) that I really enjoy the 85mm (i.e. 127mm on my D80). Even at f2.8-4-5.6 it was sharp enough to my taste, with nice bokeh on the back to emphasize the portrait itself.
Check here and in the next post a few of the portraits done with the lens.
Photos © Nicolas Zwarg – All Rights Reserved
