[currently in progress; waiting for target images]
s/n 593146
The story of this lens is yet to be written. I did tell a story in pursuit of a fisheye lens but this isn’t really that. The desire to take that kind of picture is within the confines of its performance though. It’s an ultra ultra-wide rectilinear lens. Straight lines stay straight and the field of view is nearly all encompassing. I can take pictures being very close but still include everything. The curvature of the glass collecting everything your eyes can see, bringing that into frame with very little distortion.
It’s not an iconic lens however I’m quite certain it’s a lens that many F-mount enthusiasts have in their bag. Surprised when I read a friend of mine who I have known nearly my whole life comment, “an impressive piece of glass. I’ve owned it.” I didn’t even know he was a photographer. But the fact the he had used his resourses to purchase one is enough for me to know I’m going to do good things with mine.
Lenses cost money. This one is no exception and it’s not cheap. I sold an expensive bicycle to purchase mine. The bike sat in our extra room for more than a year without being ridden, criteria meet for me to move the funds. I have another lens in mind, not a comparison to this one but a comparison in “want and need” I want a NOCT, but I’ll probably never own one not because of money. There is a NOCT project racked on the wall that I would like to move to buy one and maybe I will. But my F6 really screwed that up and the 14-24 f2.8 G can chamber it. It’s a film camera that has suppressed my desire for manual focus photography. The F3 is my elixir though. The NOCT on the F3, hmm, yeah, I’m not done yet, no, I’m not done.
This lens will help me get the images I want. I can already see myself putting my binoculars down, reaching into my backpack, pulling out the old Lowepro Toploader minimalist padded holster and pinching the plastic clip to open the top. I can feel that sensation. I can see myself sitting on my three legged stool breathing hard from having hiked, sitting there scanning the cliff line for the designs pecked in stone a couple of hundred miles from my home, I’m on an adventure and I found what I’m looking for. I’ve done this before. Those images are already in my tablet and the images I’ll take will be there too. I’m gathering many things, it’s a habit, a cycle and I have at least a few seasons, years of standing up, walking, climbing over and composing the frame, shuttering, recomposing, capturing images.
I know this lens is capable. I’m getting deeper into my photography and I read about it. I pick and choose what I read from experience and this lens is there, always. I do participate in social media but that’s not research, it’s a party I join where people are so high on themselves. I read a guy commenting on, “how could I bear using a zoom lens?” “Primes are so much better.” I listen but I don’t put a lot of energy into my response. He doesn’t want help, he already has it all figured out. He knows more than teams of lens designers, more than most gifted photographers. He knows so he isn’t learning any longer.
This lens will help me learn. It’s heavy, bulky, expensive and it has the most wonderful perspective filled with potential. I want that. The attributes literally outweigh its design. I can’t use a filter, the front element is exposed, not protected but that’s not a problem for me. Even in the dusty clime of miles down a wash, the lens cap, holster, backpack and a fine soft lens brush* and it is mitigated.
Part of my photography desire is to bring art to my pictures or the other way around. In my mind, through my tablet and this lens lies the potential for a photograph from the results of a thinker, hundreds, maybe more than a thousand years ago. He pecked his vision on an older rock, tens, hundreds of thousands of years of desert varnish. He or she sat there knowing this design would be there for the village, for herself, permanent. It’s just a few miles from here, near a stadium we watch on the television, you may have even seen the mountain it is leaning on it is that close. I’m going to get a picture of that art with modern man’s architecture in the scene and I think this lens is going to help me paint that picture, literally.
There are others like me, wait, that’s not true yet. There are people that have succeeded at what I’m striving to do. They write books on the topic. I peck out stories on my tablet. I peck the stories of ancients pecking rocks, taking pictures of their art while collecting ideas for mine. Maybe I’m doing my work now? I don’t know but I hope not. I have purchased some basic tools, a larger format pad of sketching paper. The kit sits on top of the bin of lenses under my bed. Artists tools, both filled with potential.
I’m ahead of myself but that’s the nature of my subject, future primitive. It’s my birthday and today I’m sixty five years old. I feel like a kid in my mind but my body can’t cash the checks that the kid writes. I have to be careful. Fortunately I stopped doing the things that could kill me. Now I just need to stay out of the hospital, those places definitely increase the odds of getting sick. I need to break habits, balance expressions, some habits are juxtapositions, the pre dawn writing on my iPad laying on the couch is wonderful, napping on the couch too much is my drug, I don’t want to overdose.
So this lens might just fulfill those images I want together. Future primitive, idea gathering, portfolio, for what? Because man, just because. Time to get off the couch and get busy taking some pictures.
*note to self: dedicate a lens brush to my petroglyph backpack.
Resources
Watch out for the below line up for pop ups and the usual wading through dog shit to get to the words
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