It was a pleasant October day for the 2025 Fall Arts
& Crafts Show in Prescott. The annual heavy rain season ended, the full
moon was larger and brighter than ever, and the sun was as warm as a desert sun
can be.
Over the years I have seen many of the same artist
display their works at this downtown show, yet I like spending a few hours
walking around for street photography. In some way, it is my own way to pursue
my creative tendencies and capture a few moments with my vintage cameras on
B&W film.
This time, I left the 50mm lens home and opted for
the 105mm f2.5 Nikkor on my 1990s Nikon F3 HP. Although the camera is “new”,
the design of Nikkor 105 f2.5 goes back to 1954 when it was first produced as a
rangefinder lens. The adaptation to the Nikon F mount happened in 1971 and, for
the manual focus lens, the design remained unchanged till 2005 when production
stopped. I have owned mine for more than two decades as my prime lens for portraiture.
This time I wanted to use it as a short zoom and see how it will do with light and shade compositions. Although the F3 with a winder and the Nikkor lens tends to be on the heavy side to carry, the balance between the two is wonderful and allows for quick and precise manual focusing.
A. Photo atop the page
So, I started with a composition for which a portraiture
lens is most appropriate. The photo atop the page was taken from a distance of
about 12 meters, the man sitting in the shade of a tree. I set an aperture of
f4 using the Aperture Priority mode of the camera.
The texture, the creamy bokeh, and the sharpness of
the lens are all what a photographer dreams of when using film. The man changed
his posture right after this shot, and I did not have a chance to reset the
aperture to f2.5 hopping to see a more fluid bokeh. Still, I am glad I had the
105 lens instead of the 50mm f1.8 I often use.
B. 105mm as a telephoto
This next photo was all about experimenting with
light and shade and using the 105mm lens as a telephoto. I saw a man getting
ready to lay down under one of the tall trees around the square, next to the 1907
statue of Bucky O’Neil, a Prescott hero, who along with 200 local men joined Teddy
Roosevelt’s voluntary Rough Riders cavalry and fought the Spanish-American war
in 1898.
I immediately saw the posture of the man as if having
a conversation with O’Neil who is on the ground next to his horse. But since I
took the photo from a distance of about 40 meters and f5.6 aperture, that
detail may escape the viewer of the larger frame.
Here is a crop to show why I took the photo:
Still, for a portraiture lens, the Nikkor shows
delightful detail as a long shot, and the overall tonal gradient between the
shade and light of the composition is typically what film capture compared to
digital media.
C. Almost a portrait
Finally, a typical street photography moment to fulfill my goal of testing the venerable Nikkor 105mm with that tonal range full of gray to show depth and detail. This one shows a young lady who stopped for a second to check her phone under another Bucky O’ Neil statue, this time riding his horse. I had the aperture set to f5.6 but hardly had time to focus and frame before she moved, and the lens for just a tad too long to include the O’Neil’s hat.
Yet, the
technical prowess of the Nikkor’s 80 year old design shows why it is still a
favorite of many professional photographers in an era when lenses and cameras,
often with the assistance of AI, can do things unimaginable a decade ago.
Even if few of them now use mechanical cameras and
film!
PS/ I have taken photos of Bucky O’Neil statue after
a snowstorm here:
October 6, 2025
©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025
