It was today. I'm 23.
We enjoyed a nice Saturday dinner last night at a local French restaurant where the no. 1 child was making up exciting new screenplay ideas involving New Yorkers all turning into animals, and today we went down to explore brunch opportunities in the old Meat Packing District. (Remember Glenn Close's funky loft apartment in "Fatal Attraction"? That neighborhood.) Once the center of New York City's meat market (big guys in bloodstained white coats with cleavers), it has now become the hippest & chiquest boutiquery south of Rue St. Catherine, anchored by Stella McCartney's shop.
New restaurants of all varieties are sprouting up down there (you can tell we don't get to Greenwich Village that much) and luckily my old faithfuls -- Tortilla Flats, Frank's & florent...even Automatic Slims! -- are still there. Hunger drove us like cattle into a nameless new Italian steak place with nice wines and the fried calimari was a pleasant surprise.
Later, the pup & I took a stroll and went to pick out my present...
I've been shooting an ancient (ca. 2001 vintage) 6-odd MegaPixel digital SLR -- the Fujifilm Finepix S1 Pro -- which exploits Nikon lenses (and even the old Nikon N60 plastic body); the S1 has some wild distorted Fuji-esque improvisational color capabilities which never produce ennui.
I love this old camera, even though it laughably takes whole minutes to bus the hi-res TIFF's (which I rarely shoot).
(I'm striclty fish & chips, burger & fries, down & dirty, with JPG. My philosophy: Resolution is overrated, content & "intention" underrated. I hate zooms: they're out! Get up and move your ass to frame the shot! Getting good pictures should be sweaty business -- or you're probably not involved enough. The Beatles recorded their best work on only four tracks.)
My idea was to collect a small, portable set of the Nikon fixed primes -- the D lenses -- and, believe it or not, I've shot so little in the last 14 months that I only managed to justify getting the 50/1.4 -- which I use as a portrait lens for shooting my two favorite subjects. (The 50mm's angle of view is like a 75mm used to be on a film camera...if you don't know already, don't ask. And this 50 is small and bright -- one of the advantages of the smaller digital sensor approach which Nikon and Fuji are sticking with. Good for cost and smart, all around, in my view. Canon's "full-size" sensor is like backward-compatibility for the brain-dead, although the Canon stuff is great for so many reasons. These Icelandic ladies are getting wonderful stuff out of their Canons. I think Ben shoots Canon. Simon shoots Canon. And all the soccer/football shooters use white lenses. I like the Nikon interface a lot and the wack Fuji sensor.)
My no. 1 subject...
...and my no. 2.
So, with only a 50 in the bag, land- and city-scapes as well as architectural, indoor and my beloved distorted facial closeups were all but impossible. (I barely got anything good in Berlin & Bristol because of my limited glass palette.) I just had to get some width. One look through this Nikon 14/2.8 and I was done. Ken Rockwell has the lowdown -- though Ken seems to like the 12mm - 24mm wide zoom for digital.
My next lens will be the whole reason to be shooting Nikon in the first place -- the amazing & bright 85/1.4. I can shoot film with these lenses, too, with a trusty reissue FM3a. It's retro, but we need to feed the black&white Gods to build up our karmic photo-fu.
It was nice to have 23 candles on the cake this year ;-). More time to make pix.
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