Using the Micro Nikkor 55mm f3.5 lens on my Leica SL2 camera for general photography

When you think of a general purpose lens, your mind normally doesn’t wander to a macro lens.

I have found over the years that there are a couple of Nikkor lenses in this family that work really well for the task of general purpose photography lens and this is one of them. This particular copy is an Ai variant made somewhere in the late 1976 to early 1977 time frame so this lens is almost 50 years old and just look at the image quality it produces… Lens manufactures were on their A game at this point and Nikon was a force to be reckoned with in this area. This lens isn’t even their best macro lens either… That is something that to this day surprises me a little. It has an external aperture ring that is detented in whole stops…except the very first one where it goes from f3.5 to f4 for some reason… Who knows why they did this, but they did so it is there if you want to use it.

Minimum focus distance is a surprising 9 1/2” from the image plane. So this is right at 4.25 inches in front of the lens when mounted on my Leica SL2 camera. This also gives you a preproduction ratio of 1:2 on the image sensor, that is to say that if you have an object that is 1 inch across in reality, it will be 1/2 inch across the sensor. To get to 1:1 reproduction ratio you need help… The PK-3 extension ring will get you half that distance and to the true 1:1 reproduction ratio at minimum focus distance. All of this is conveniently engraved on the lens barrel for you should you need to look it up in the field… Also notice in these two images that the lens “pumps” air which means it has external focus movement, the lens grows and shrinks when you adjust focus, it is common belief that this is where dust gets into the lens from, when you open the lens fully to minimum focus distance the lens intakes a full charge of air and doesn’t have dust seals to prevent dust from entering the lens mechanism, so you get a little internal dust…

One last thing to note about this focus mechanism is that the reason I like using these lenses for general purpose photography like travel and such is that as you can see in the above photo, the focus throw from infinity to less than 1 meter is short, so focus is fast with this lens. It also has a range focus scale, but since it is 55mm, the scale is rather small and not easy to use, it will give you rough numbers to work with but that is all.

Enough with all this tech talk, let’s take it for a spin and see what the photos look like on my Leica SL2 mirrorless camera since it has IBIS on the sensor and I can hand hold photos at unheard of shutter speeds with it.

First thing I notice when using this lens is how good it feels in the hand. The location and feel of the controls are literally in the perfect location.

Another thing I noticed was that it is sharp, like incredibly sharp. To this point, it makes sense that is would be this good due to the design intent of the lens but it has a really nice general purpose focus throw too. This lends itself to being a wonderful walk about lens. The following photos were shot on my Leica SL2 using this lens as a walkable lens. I have used another Nikon macro lens before in this same capacity, the 60mm Micro Nikkor once lived on my D810 as a general purpose lens. It works flawlessly in this capacity.

In the above photo you can see what I love about a camera with stabilization in it. The camera sensor is rock steady so I can capture shutter speeds like in the photo above where I was running something like 1/30 second and some of my water blur shots were 1/4 second!!! Like the one below is a 1/4 second handheld exposure and if you will look, the rocks are crisp and the water has a really nice blur to in. This is at f32 as well so there will be some diffraction in the image from that but all in all, it looks really nice.

Below is a crop from this image. As you can see, the spider webs are even visible and this is handheld no less! As long as you have some decent light this combination is really nice. When you move to a mirrorless camera body that has IBIS on the sensor, it unlocks so many possibilities with lens / camera combinations. I dont know why hobbyists dont see this sooner but a lot dont.

So in conclusion, I highly recommend this little guy if you need a macro lens on occasion and want a nice general purpose lens the rest of the time. The f3.5 maximum aperture also allows the glass to be smaller and lighter as well. This is also a huge perk to everyone except those people who shoot with big glass… until next time, get your camera out and take a picture with it!

Discussing my Leica SL2 and a Yashica 28mm on a photowalk in Chattanooga TN

Well, I have finally made time to go take photos again and to be honest about it, I wanted to let it cool off a little too. Well, it is nicer weather now and I am starting to get out and look for photo opportunities again. I have a few I am looking into but for right now, it is still a good ole case of urban photography that I so love to do.

Today we find me in Chattanooga yet again and this time I am setup on a side street off of Main street called Rossville Avenue and this road has some really neat old buildings on it, some of which I have photographed in the past but I like to get photos of them as I go along to show how they change with time. I get parked and pay for one hour of parking so I have to make it count. Putting a little pressure on myself to come away with SOMETHING of value in this time allotment.,,

My first stop is the Hamilton Parts Distributors building that has been NOT a parts distributor for quite some time as of this point…2023. The building is really starting to show its age too with numerous windows bricked up on the sides as well as the front giving it a sort of dystopian imbalanced look. This could be a set right out of a movie or something. I took several photos from different angles today and some look better than others. I really like the front door and the corner that I get today for some reason… Here they are, what do you think?

I love how the building still has remnants of the signage that was painted on it some time in the past too. Also look at the foundation material, today it is all either poured concrete or cement blocks and has been for many decades, so I am going to speculate this is pre-war construction meaning before World War 2, due to these limestone foundation stones that look like they were repurposed from another construction site that existed before this building did. I have evidence of these cut stones going back to the mid 19th century so I know these are probably something left over either from a fire or was just cast off and the people that built this building saw a chance to save a few dollars on this part of the construction. Also notice that they didn’t seem to think that these stones were very appealing as they hid them behind a mortar stucco finish as seen in the front door photo.

My next stop was right next door at Zarzours Cafe.

This cafe has been in business for over 100 years, Yeah, you read that right…a century and as you see on the sign. It is closing in less than a month. I have never eaten here either. I will change that in the next few days. I have to be able to say that I sat at their café and enjoyed the fine cuisine they had to offer for a century! How could I let that slide???

Back to the walk at hand. I took a couple of photos of the restaurant and parking area and headed on down the street.

The next stop was at the Koch Foods Processing plant. This is one of two processing plants inside the city that I am aware of. These have been here for decades too so they are pretty much fixtures of the city at this point. One is on Broad street and the other is here on Rossville Ave. It being such an iconic location coupled with the skyline containing Lookout Mtn as well makes for a cool photo to me.

After the chicken plant, I made my way over to Main street and did a little photography on Main as well. Main usually has something really colorful as well as interesting too, this is why I usually always make my way over and look around for a little while at a minimum…

These two photos just go to show what all can be found on Main street even when it is not having some sort of special event. All it takes is a little creativity and time of your part to come away with some interesting photos. Now you might be thinking these are not interesting photos, and you will be right as the photo interest rate will vary from person to person, but I found that these to be quite interesting so I am sharing them with you…lol. The difference between the two photo primarily is the shutter speed as one is really slow to blur the truck and the other is faster so it will capture the whole construction scene with out any motion blur on my part.

Well, this is going to be a wrap for the post, I hope you enjoyed following along and if you would like to watch a video of this trip, just click on the link below. Thank you for you time and get your camera out!

Fall color photos FINALLY!!!

Well, it sure took long enough, but I finally found a place local to me that had some beautiful fall color photo opportunities.

This is not something I normally have when it is as dry as it has been recently. Let me explain…

I am no scientist but I have stayed in a Holiday Inn before, so here goes. From what I have seen, there are three different scenarios that usually unfold around here in the fall.

The first event is like this, we get plenty of rain in the spring, it dries out a little in the mid summer months and then it starts to rain in late September or early October. This is actually the best possible scenario from what I can tell…

The second scenario is the same as the first one except the rain turns into a thunderstorm storm with heavy rain and usually high winds during peak color season, knocking all the leaves off of the trees.

Then there is option three, this one is where there is rain in the spring but then it is dry for the entirety of summer and fall. This is the type of season we are in now. There has not been enough rain to matter in two months…maybe more. It is so little water that the creek next to my house has no surface water in it as of this writing.

Of the three events, the first one is the preferred for fall color photos as there is sufficient water for the trees to transition normally to their dormant winter state and you get this incredible color display in the fall. This year though, we have event three where everything is a huge tinderbox and the leaves are simply drying out and turning brown then falling off of the trees without passing through their color phase at all…except…in the few places where there is still ground water to water the trees.

Enter North Chickamauga Creek WMA near Soddy Daisy Tennessee. This is a small WMA (Wildlife Management Area) situated in a gorge next to Mowbray mountain and is a popular spot for the locals to cool off in the summertime in the river. Well, the river is just a brook at this point and is barely moving at all, BUT it is there! If you watch my YouTube video on it you will see what I mean. Even so, there is still enough water to feed the trees so they had a fall color change.

Since I found some colors this year, I now had to figure out what I wanted to use to capture all this color with. I finally settled on my camera being the Leica SL2 as it has a high resolution sensor and several other features that lend itself to being a wonderful landscape photography camera. You see the Leica SL2 is a mirrorless camera so it can be adapted to various vintage lenses really easily and we all know how I love using vintage lenses! So today’s lens of choice for the Leica is the Nikkor 28mm f2.8 AiS. This is one of Nikon’s crowning achievements in lens design as it was as close to optical perfection as they had ever gotten to that point. So naturally I used this lens.

The magic of the Leica SL2 as well is that it has IBIS on the sensor. This basically turns all my vintage lenses into stabilized lenses. I know there are a ton of other cameras that also have these same features but I just like the Leica SL2 for some reason.

Now that the camera setup is settled, next is finding the photo I want. I started out looking for macro level images, vistas and scenes, then I moved in closer to get more detailed image ideas. The first one is shown above of the red maple tree in a sea of yellow. Then I moved to the river bed and found some wonderful colors out in the open.

This was literally what I was greeted with when I looked upstream from where I entered the river bottom. Not much water, but I got such a color splash from the trees that I didn’t even care. I would have liked for it to not be overcast, but you take what you can get and work with it. I really love this image too, so much texture and color in one image that is is almost overwhelming. I was really starting to embrace the look that the 28mm lens was giving me and then I decided to move upstream to that large boulder you see in the above photo and get a different perspective from that spot.

The little smidgen of sky showing the over cast clouds almost makes it otherworldly or something like that. I was blown away with this image when I got it into Lightroom and was able to see it better. It almost doesn’t look real back up in the valley next to the sky. The clouds were epic! This is also shot hand held with the 28mm lens. What is nice is that it allowed me to be very agile and not have the burden of the back pack and a tripod with me at all. There is something to be said for simplicity…

So in summary, if you want to find fall colors even when it has been really dry, find the water. Where ever there is water, there will be fall colors. At least that is what I have seen, your mileage may vary.