I have to apologize to a lens. I used the 90mm TTArtisan to make a portrait of an advertising exec. yesterday and it was just right.

 

the first of many unnecessary holiday photos...

Yesterday I did my first portrait session since we got the studio re-painted. The place looks so fresh now. I even scrubbed the floor. It's so different when you take everything off your walls and everything starts to look like a blank canvas. 

I haven't done a very good job explaining why I like photographing with eccentric and non-mainstream lenses but I think I'll give it a try. Over the years I've owned some pretty great lenses. From makers such as Leica, Zeiss, Schneider, Rodenstock and Mamiya. Also some of the best from Canon and Nikon. And every time I've decided that the pricy shit is the best I stumble across a lens for a fraction of the price of a big brand name lens and I find that, with a little experimentation, it can be as good on film/sensor, as the high priced spread. And sometimes the older optical designs that seem rampant in even the newest lens products from makers in places like China have a "look" that's different enough from current state of the art optics to make the images derived from them attractive to practitioners who grew up shooting less highly corrected lenses than are available now. 

Sure, the latest lenses from the big boys, coupled with tons of carefully programmed corrections and enhancements via in-camera software, can beguile one with sharpness everywhere in the frame at every aperture, and provide an almost suspicious lack of any vignetting whatsoever. And sharpness? In spades. 

But I always find myself wondering how a "lesser" lens would fare if it was endowed with the same crutches and boosts that come packaged with our current, favorite, premium brand (and priced) lenses. 

I recently had a hard drive die and I'm thankful for back-up files. But while I was backing up the back-up files I started looking at files I'd done with older zoom lenses from various makers and comparing them with the uber performance of my ______ branded 24-90mm lens. The amazing thing to me is that I liked the overall look of the older, far cheaper zoom lenses better for the kinds of photographs that are most important to me (different from my work photos which, I usually presume, need to be technically perfect) when I compared the old ones with the "reference standard." In fact, I like most of my earlier work, mostly done with less technically advanced lenses and cameras, far more than work from the last decade or so. And some of that is down to my shift from "the best lens I could afford" all the way over to "the best lens out there." A chase for unicorns that seems, at times, to have proven not just ineffective but anti-effective. 

My article about the faults and foibles of the TTArtisan lens (90mm f1.25) wasn't intended to be a savage and dismissive skewering of that lens as much as it was intended to be a true view of what the lens is all about before adding in layers and layers of technical fixes which seem to come standard on the latest lens from the big five camera makers. When you use their cameras...

Given some reasonable work I think a lot of the shortcomings of just about any lens can be dealt with. Unless that lens happens to be the original Nikon 43-86mm f3.5. Which may be the worst zoom lens ever unleashed on the market.

It's interesting to me that when I put up a portrait from my older film days everyone falls all over each other to tell me that this is the gold standard, the target I should be aiming for. The highest photographic achievement I could hope for. 

But nearly all of the greatest hits I've posted from the middle of the career (1990s) are done with a Hasselblad and a 150mm f4.0 lens that flared like a mad dog, was very soft wide open, etc. Coupled with the shortcomings of the lens was also the fact that I diffused the edges of my prints with a device called a Pictrol which feature "flawed" plastic blades which distorted and additionally flared the light when used under an enlarging lens. My goal, at the time, was to create an image that was intentionally not razor sharp. Clinical. Savage. or, in other words, technically excellent. 

Given the outpouring of enthusiasm for the Fuji GFX 110mm lens I almost felt as though I should send some of the commenters, and the people that like to "guide" me in emails, some drool bibs to wear while contemplating what seems to be the ultimate lens of the moment for that format. And they spoke about the inevitability of me purchasing the lens --- as soon as I came to my senses. "Stop saving for the Bugatti and just get the lens!" Seemed to be the message. Disregarding that everything they loved about the "idea" of that lens is mostly antithetical to the style of work I sometimes show here and which delivers the highest praise and admiration. Kind of a disconnection. 

But it's probably mostly my fault for mentioning and writing about every piece of gear I like. 

So, instead of hopping into the car, rushing to the local bricks and mortar Fuji Pro dealer here and dropping more cash on a super sharp 110mm (the performance of which I am nearly certain is well augmented by in-camera software) I looked at my review from two posts ago and decided instead to figure out how to create a set of workable profiles for the cheap ass lens. And then use it on a paying job for a very, very informed, critical and seasoned advertising professional. Different from a lens test done in the living room with a cat, offered on Instagram. 

Lo and behold, it seems one can make a $499 lens look pretty darn good with a little bit of work. The lens has barrel distortion. Yeah. But for portrait work and most non-architectural shooting a correction of +7 with the "distortion" slider in LRC and "Bob's your uncle." Want to tame the obvious vignetting? You probably can't get rid of all of it but for portrait work, at a subject distance of about six feet (as opposed to work shot at infinity and stopped down to f16) and a working aperture of f5.6 you'll see most of it tamed except for the extreme corners and once you drop in a +45 vignetting correction in LRC you'll pretty much have that conquered as well. 

So --- what do you end up with? A lens that delivers a really, really sharp central core from f2.0 onward which is very well behaved when you make a profile with the few changes I've outlined above, and shoot most stuff at the right focal distance and with a reasonable aperture. But you also get a lens which can deliver such a narrow depth of field at its minimum aperture that it's visually amazing; if that's what you want. 

When I first bought the camera and then the lens I think I stated pretty clearly that I was aware of the vignetting of the lens but that my goal was to use the camera and lens as a modern version of the square format cameras I used in the past. Meaning I'd set the aspect ratio to 1:1 (square) and use that particular system to try to get back to the style of my portrait and scenic shooting that most of us profess to like best. And, in fact, the perceived shortcomings of the lens when compared to the technically perfect performances of the hybrid modern lens + camera corrections might just be the characteristic of the lens that I admire. Look up Wabi-Sabi. Understand that beauty can be revealed by its imperfections. 

The problem at the foundation of enjoying photography as experienced through blogs is that it tends to attract linear thinkers. Engineers. Guys who mastered slide rules. Folks who want/crave definite rules and hierarchies. And technical perfection. Kind of a "Bell Labs" approach to life and art. It's nice sometimes to step back and realize that as humans, try as we might to dodge it, we are attracted to the imperfections as a healthy balance to symmetry and perfection. Nature gets it. That's why when we make up portraits with A.I. and the machines create perfectly symmetrical faces of people we instantly understand them as being artificial. 

I read a piece about evolution and asymmetry. One would think divine creation or evolution would always aim for perfection and symmetry in all things. It was interesting to read therefore that men evolved in such a way that their testicles are asymmetrical to each other. Were they perfectly symmetrical and placed side by side they would severely hamper man's ability to run. Or at least to run (or walk) without great discomfort. 

Maybe our goal of making perfect lenses is perhaps making our ability to do some forms of photography....uncomfortable. 

Something to ponder. 

In the meantime, I put in the work to figure out the shortcomings of the TTArtisan 90mm lens when used on a GFX camera and I've created a personal set of parameters which work well. For me. I used the lens yesterday in the late afternoon, here in the studio, to shoot 250+ frames of my subject. Except for a few blinks and/or grimaces on his part, I was happy with every frame. And, amazingly, I can still manually focus a lens. Imagine that. 

A lighting note. I photographed yesterday with three Nanlite LED fixtures. It was delightful. The secret is to have the lights up and running when the subject walks in the door. They get used to the lights almost immediately. No squinting. These lights have the best color of all the LEDs I've used. No. I don't sell them. There is no affiliate link.

Later in the evening, after importing the files we made and doing a global correction for color and contrast, I pulled my old LED book off the shelf. I wrote it in 2009 and the book was published in 2010. The advancements in the quality and power of LEDs in the short 13 years since is stunning. I remember working hard to make those older, multiple bulb LED panels work for color photography. It was possible but it took a lot of time and skill to get close to nearly perfect color. Now? It's amazingly simple. 

So, the takeaway from yesterday's shoot is that I found vignetting from the lens far less imposing when I used the lens as I usually do use a lens for portrait work. Apparently vignetting is not just dependent on aperture but also on subject to camera distance and lens focus distance. But before you laud more expensive lenses it's good to know that ALL lenses have to be designed for peak performance at one certain distance. Everything else is techno-magic. And interestingly, aren't we all opposed to the intrusion of under the hood, hidden tricks? At least when it comes to our photo gear?

Now that I've learned how to use the 90mm I  feel I owe it an apology for making it a whipping boy instead of just rolling up my sleeves, doing the work and getting to know it. 

If I were just starting my career I'm sure I would be rushing out to buy the "best" lens you could get for the GFX and portraits. It might be the 110mm. At this point, as I'm moving away from all commercial work all the time my impetus to buy stuff just because "it makes sense" or it's the consensus (homogenous) choice is much diminished. 

You might be happy to read that I'm almost fully recovered from my bout with the common cold. Tested negative for Covid. And also, the new microwave has landed and is nearly identical to the old one so I don't have to create a new "custom profile" in order to use it.

That's all the news I've got today. Maybe go outside and play with cameras. It can be a lot of fun.