The Online Photographer

—> Try not to breathe: The air quality was miserable here this morning, 198 as I write this. It was even worse just east-southeast of here. The air is yellow and shrouded. Not only can we not see the sun, I can only barely make out the other side of the lake half a mile away. There isn't a breath of wind. They're saying the air quality will clear by 1:00 p.m. tomorrow, but they've said something similar several times over the past few days, and that target keeps moving. And yet, a fair wind has to blow sooner or later. So we'll see. Meanwhile, I'm hunkered down in the house, where I plan to stay—I'm only going to let the dog go outside as much as necessary. (For those of you not up on the situation, we are being inundated with smoke from massive out-of-control Canadian wildfires.)

So far this morning I've seen one jogger and one cyclist go by. I think it's fair to say they are either uninformed or bloody-minded, in the British sense of the latter term. The way the British use it, "bloody-minded" means "stubbornly contrary; deliberately difficult; refusing to be dissuaded even when to do so would be sensible."

—> PGA perfidy: My late brother had a hostile next-door neighbor who was inventive in coming up with ways to be unfriendly. One day they came home and found a line of stakes in the lawn. It turned out the neighbor was planning to build a fence. The trouble was that the stakes were two feet over the line into my brother's property. My brother and/or his wife talked to the neighbor and somebody removed the stakes. A few days later the stakes reappeared, even further into my brother's property. His wife angrily pulled them up and threw them back in the neighbor's yard. To solve this impasse, my brother hired a surveyor to mark the legal lot line, and contracted to have his own fence built where it was legally allowed. Did my brother win or lose, though? My thought was that he had paid for the fence his neighbor wanted.

Imagine how the PGA golfers must feel who resisted the urge to sell out to the Saudis. The ones who did decamp for the big payoffs presumably get to keep their money, but they're back in the PGA anyway, as if nothing happened. The ones who made a principled stand and stayed loyal to the PGA lose out. But here's the real rub: imagine if the Saudi Public Investment Fund had approached the PGA proposing to pay a bunch of money and take over half of it. The PGA would probably have told them to take a long walk off a short pier. And yet, with the recent merger that "solves" so many disputes and problems, that's exactly what the Saudis have accomplished. Like my brother's nefarious neighbor. Dirty deed, done. "Sportswashing" indeed.

—> To mark the occasion: I've decided I should try to review the Pentax Monochrome.

—> Who's to say what's normal? A reader with the handle of Lith, who comments infrequently but often rather brilliantly (although most of his longer comments date from 2010 to 2013), said the other day: "43mm is the only True Normal!"

To which I reply, sort of. Forty-three point twenty-seven millimeters (43.27mm) is the diagonal of a rectangle that is precisely 24x36mm. But there are a few problems with that. First of all, not all film gates are precisely 24x36mm and neither are the effective pixel area of all FF sensors. Then we come to the real problem: the idea that the focal length of a "normal" lens should equal the diagonal of the format is only a very rough rule of thumb in the first place—it's not a hard and fast rule by any stretch. And there's no principle behind it. It was merely adopted as a sort of weak partial solution to the fact that formats are so different in shape that any calculation based on the long dimension of the rectangle alone would be distorted. Mainly that was true when comparing the square of many rollfilm cameras to the long rectangle of 35mm, which was thought overlong by some (a problem which mighty Nikon sought to cure in its infancy, briefly making its Nikon One cameras with a film gate that was nominally 24x32mm, although some actually measured 24x31mm. This effort failed because it "broke" the standardization that was already in place at the time). It was how the normal lens for a TLR camera became 80mm—because that's the diagonal of the nominal 6x6cm format, which is actually 56x56mm.

Anyway, the upshot is that making the focal length of the normal lens equal the diagonal of the format is false precision. There's no reason why it has to be that way and no reason why pictures would look better if it does. It's similar to the idea of measuring a person's weight to a tenth of an ounce—your weight fluctuates throughout the day, as you know if you weigh yourself in the morning and the evening.

Upshot: Normal for you is what you say it is. Whatever feels comfortable and natural for you, that's the True Normal.

UPDATE: The air has cleared greatly this evening, to visual appearances, and the AQI is going down, down, down. Zero to 50 is the Good range. Today I've watched it go from 198, to 165, to 151, and now it's 115: "Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups." So I guess the westerly wind has come to our rescue—115 is still not great, though, so I'm staying inside for now, and we'll see what tomorrow brings.

Mike

P.S. I tried to take a picture of it with my color camera—the iPhone—but the darn thing kept correcting the color and hyping up the contrast and clarity, which diminished the accuracy of the picture. Whatever happened to the ideal of a camera as a recording device?

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

RubyT: "We had that hazy yellow air in the fall of 2020 when the smoke from the East Troublesome fire joined that of the Cameron Peak fire. My digital cameras/phone sought to correct the color. My Instax recorded it accurately. It was not smart enough to argue against yellow air."

Christer Almqvist: "The true focal length for me is 41.6 mm which I round to 40mm. Incidentally, among my five lenses the Sony 40mm ƒ/2.5 is my standard lens. How did I get to 41.61 mm? Well, in Europe, where I live, common printing papers come in the A series sizes where the longest side is equal to the shortest side times the square root of 2. Printing and web site presentation becomes easier and more coherent if all pictures are in that proportion. So the first thing I do when when working on my RAW images is to crop to 24x34mm. If you crop the sensor image to 24x34mm, then the diagonal is 41.6 mm. Voilà.

"By the way, you complained about your iPhone correcting color in way you do not want it to. My complaint about the iPhone is that it cannot do square roots."

James: "26mm-e is the new normal. How? That is what phones have for their main camera. Visually, people are used to it, because so many photos they see are at that focal length."

When I came into photography way back when, the then-current Nikkors were the AIS manual-focus lenses which dated from 1982. They were solid little chunks of metal and glass, overbuilt and hard to hurt. The AIS lenses were also only slightly different from the 1977 AI lenses, enabling just a few selected modes on a small number of camera models. There are three markers of an AIS lens: a little metal lip on the back of the lens where it met the mount, a small scoop taken out of the mount at the lower-middle left as you looked at the back of the lens (for illustrations see here), and the smallest aperture on the aperture ring marked in orange. They were preferred mainly because they were the newest type at the time, and, later, on the used market, because they're the most recent of the classic manual-focus Nikkors. There are some fun books useful to collectors. Eyes of Nikon, from 1985, a Nikon publication, and Nikon System Handbook by B. Moose Petersen, which I believe was first published in 1991, were the ones I had. 

(Generally, books about camera systems from the manufacturers mark the peak of those systems; a manufacturer only puts out a book when they're proud of their products and selling them successfully. That hasn't been the case in recent years, though, presumably because lineups of digital products change too rapidly. And because the information is online, more or less. Fujifilm still ought to commemorate its beautiful system with a book for enthusiasts, sez me.)

Sorry, too much of an intro. All I meant to say was that at the time that the AIS lenses were current, Nikon had pretty much every major focal length covered with at least one prime (single-focal-length) lens. With the 35mm focal length, it had no fewer than three: an ƒ/1.4, an ƒ/2, and an ƒ/2.8. Eventually there was also an economy lens as well, the 35mm ƒ/2.5 Series E. When autofocus came along in the late '80s, Nikon made do for quite a while with just one, the 35mm ƒ/2 AF-Nikkor. Once DSLRs got going, though, Nikon for a considerable time in the early days was committed to APS-C (logically, in my view, although companies must follow the market and markets aren't rational), yet there was no 35mm-equivalent prime for the APS-C "crop sensor" (as it was derisively called) cameras. We all assumed it would come along. Only natural, right? We waited and waited. And waited. It never arrived.

Ever.

There still isn't one, not for the DSLRs. And now, of course, there will never be.

That always seemed odd. It's true that, by then, the popularity of zooms was overwhelming. And it's true that some photographers, like Thom Hogan and TOP reader Tom Burke, never cottoned to the 35mm angle of view. That's natural. But it used to be such a mainstream lens type—most of the later .72X Leica M cameras are virtually tailor-made to the focal length. Did so few people want a simple 35mm-equivalent wide-normal prime that it wasn't even worth it to Nikon to offer one for APS-C? And even if it was true that the lens wouldn't be very popular, what about the whole "system" idea, whereby a manufacturer convinces people that having access to its whole system offers flexibility for now and in the future? Canon famously made no fewer than three tilt-shift lenses for that reason, and if even one of them ever covered its development costs I'd be surprised. The payoff came when pros who wanted the greatest choice among T/S lenses switched to Canon. Of course, the only company still committed to APS-C DSLRs, Pentax, still doesn't have a 35mm-e prime or something close to it. It's why I switched away from Pentax in the early days of digital. Although, in Pentax's favor, the delightful little Pentax DA 20–40mm ƒ/2.8, with its short 2X zoom range, can be considered—and might even have been conceived as—an "adjustable 35mm," harking back to an earlier prototype of just such a concept that was never produced*.

So why is mirrorless so different? One of the early lenses for APS-C Sony mirrorless cameras was the Zeiss 24mm ƒ/1.8 ZA. That's a 35mm equivalent. Fuji has two wonderful 23mms, the ƒ/1.4 and the ƒ/2 "Fujicron," both of which I own (there are actually two ƒ/1.4 lenses, the old and the new. I have the older one). Those are all 35mm equivalents too.

And now Nikon has walked back its earlier attitude, and introduced a ~35mm equivalent for the "crop-sensor" mirrorless Z cameras, as we discussed a couple of days ago. Why not, is one question that could be asked—the Z System is proving popular, as Nikon needs it to be. But "why" is also an interesting question too.

The Nikkor Z 26mm ƒ/2.8

It joins, of course, the wonderful 35mm ƒ/1.8S for the full-frame Z cameras, a lens which is almost too good. Not only that, but I belatedly learned yesterday that Nikon also has a ~40mm-e "pancake" for its APS-C cameras in the Z System! The Nikkor-Z 26mm ƒ/2.8. I must have missed that when it came out very early this year. Or did I hear about it and mislay the information in the crowded rummage-box of my brain like a misplaced pair of glasses or car keys? Anyway, now Nikon has both a small bargain-priced prime 40mm ƒ/2 lens for its FX (full-frame) Z cameras, available in a retro version too no less for only a few more bucks, which looks like an old AIS—and a prime 40mm-equivalent pancake lens for its DX (APS-C) Z cameras. Wow, is all I can say to that. For so long, 40mm was so close to 35mm that those of us who liked it were voices crying in the wilderness. Now, 40mm[e] seems almost, dare I say it, popular.

The only option still missing among Z-system normal lenses as far as I can see is a 50mm-equivalent specifically for Nikon's APS-C mirrorless, which means—another surprise, to me—that Nikon released a 40mm-e and a 35mm-e for Z-system DX before releasing a 50mm-e. Times change. Although if that's what you really want, you could adapt the older 35mm ƒ/1.8G DX DSLR lens ($177) using the FTZ II adaptor ($250). 

Other than that, this seems true: whatever your choice for a main/normal lens, prime or zoom, 35mm[e], 40mm[e] or 50mm[e], and for whichever kind of camera, the Nikon Z System has it covered. And that is what a system is supposed to do.

(We have more new equipment to discuss, but I got distracted with this. Forty millimeter equivalent lenses are to me like catnip is to cats. The fact that they see like I do does some weird endorphinny thing to my brain....)

Mike

*The Pentax-M FLEXI 35mm ƒ/2.8 was adjustable from ~32mm to ~39mm. The idea was to shoot with it as if it were a 35mm, and then adjust your framing slightly when needed. It was exhibited at Photokina 1979 (which took place in 1978), but, perhaps understandably (the concept being too subtle for most), never put into production. There was a 75mm ƒ/3.5 FLEXI prototype too! These facts from some members on PentaxForum.com, where there are several illustrations. The 20–40mm Pentax zoom is 30–60mm-equivalent, and there is a history of 2X zooms—in fact, in the early days of varifocal and zoom lenses when most if not all zooms were of inferior quality (the Leitz family forbade Leica to produce them), 2X was considered a good conservative limit if you didn't want quality to suffer. But buyers wanted more and more zoom range, and manufacturers were of course happy to comply.

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Danfogel: "I am a mostly film shooter and love 40mm lenses. I mostly shoot a Leica M2 and have both a Rokkor 40mm ƒ/2 (filed down to bring up 35mm framelines by the previous owner) and the delightful LTM [Leica thread mount, a term for M39 screwmount coined by Marc James Small —Ed.] Rollei 40mm ƒ/2.8 that I have on a 35mm LTM-to-M converter (same framelines). In my experience, when using the Leica M2 and wearing glasses, what you can see is about 40mm. I also like to carry around a 1972 Olympus 35EC that belonged to my late father. It has a gem of an Olympus 40mm ƒ/2.8. All good at 40mm over here."

Albert Smith: "I still take my Eyes Of Nikon off the shelf from time to time. Many a day in the '80s were spent planning my next purchase comparing specs from the small charts that accompanied each lens. I got my book for free from Nikon after returning warranty paperwork for a camera. Nikon was smart, because that 'free' book got the company over a dozen lens purchases from me.

"For what it's worth, I'm 90% a Fujifilm shooter now, but I bought a Voightlander 40mm ƒ/2 lens for my Nikon DSLR, and that lens has been the only lens mounted for almost two years. The version that I have is a clone of an old Nikkor and if it appeared in the Eyes Of Nikon book from the '80s, it would have never looked out of place. The optical quality of this lens however smokes every similar AI/AIs lens within a few millimeters of this focal length. It puts my AIS 35mm ƒ/1.4 to shame and is better than any 50mm Nikkor from that era. Every time that I take it out on my D700, I keep wishing that it existed in the old F3 days. It truly is the Goldilocks focal length...just right."

Kent Phelan: "And let's not forget the Fuji GF 50mm ƒ/3.5, another 40mm-e lens. Small, simple, superb, it changes the GFX 100S into a different, portable, kind of 'throw back' machine."