Contax Rangefinder Cameras « Martyn Pearson's Blog

March 5, 2010

Urban Landscapes in Manchester

A few weeks ago I had the delightful opportunity of nipping into Manchester city centre with a couple of good friends of mine, Shaun Mcallister, who is the course leader of the National Diploma in photography at Blackburn college, and what a superb chap he is too. Also along for the ride was my mate Carlton Watt. one of the finest photographers I’ve ever met, almost as talented as yours truly. As an obsessive, I couldn’t help but take photographs throughout the day. For the photographers amongst you I used a Contax rangefinder with a Carl Zeiss lens. Blinding.

Superb light down an alley, just off St Annes Square, Manchester

After a great lunch and a pint or two in Sam’s Chop House we went to Manchester Art Gallery – http://www.manchestergalleries.org/. This is always worth a visit. We had a look at “Facing East – Recent Works from China, India and Japan from the Frank Cohen Collection”. Also, like the naughty schoolboys that we are, we had a quiet giggle at Ron Mueck’s highly detailed surreal, out of scale sculptures. If you have children these two shows are a must and are on until mid april. Check-out the their website for details.

Chinese herbal medicines

A small scale pub crawl ensued. A stroll through China Town brought us to my favourite pub of the night ‘The Circus Tavern’. Now I’m in no way a real ale fan. More of a lager boy me. All British beers that I have tried have tasted like fairy liquid, ugh. But this place is a real gem. This is what Camra say about it:

The Circus Tavern
86 Portland Street, Manchester. Tel: 0161-236 5818.
Reputedly, this is the smallest pub in Manchester, and has one of the smallest bars in Britain. Small, unsophisticated, little changed since its earliest days. Built around 1790, when Portland Street attracted performers, travelling entertainers and artists due to the nearby Circus at Chatham Street – hence the name of the pub. No food or music. An authentic “old” early 19th century pub, where atmosphere, good ales and conversation are the order of the day.

The Circus Tavern. Warm inside, cold and wet out.

From there we went for a curry, home by train…. Sore head by morning.

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February 28, 2010

Nikon Nikkor 24mm f1.4 Lens

The new Nikkor AFS 24mm f1.4 G ED lens

I was pleased to hear Nikon announcing the release of their 24mm f1.4 wide angle lens. Does this mean they will now produce a range of fast lenses? Nikon’s main competitor produce some really wide aperture lenses, such as the auto-focus 50mm f1.2 and the 85mm f1.2. Although in my opinion these two lenses are poor performers at maximum aperture.

For many years now I have regularly used the Nikon 85mm f1.4 AIS (manual focus) as I love the creamy out of focus quality of images produced by this lens. It’s rare that I use this lens at a smaller aperture than f1.4 and have always been pleased with the superb control of contrast, vignetting and corner sharpness.

Much of my imagery is created using available light, and fast lenses are vital at allowing more shooting opportunities without compromise. I can use lower iso settings and achieve the shallow depth of field that I almost always aim for, especially in portraiture. Many Nikon lenses have a maximum aperture of F2.8 and these can out perform most other SLR competitor lenses. I often hear that f2.8 is a large aperture, it is not. A fast aperture is at least f1.4. This and larger is, for a professional very important.

Optically, the best lenses out there are Zeiss. Many of these are made with little compromise. Luckily Zeiss manufacture a range of manual focus lenses that will fit Nikon cameras. Much of my personal work is produced using a Carl Zeiss lens and this is on a Contax camera. Now there was a company that could make great equipment. Never bettered for optics and arguably rangefinder cameras.

What Nikon professional photographers now need is auto-focus f1.2, 50mm and 85mm lenses. Nikon make the most useful DSLR cameras out there. Nikon make the best strobe system and some of the most useful lenses. Please, if you are listening, add to this some truly fast optics.

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