Prints, backup, lenses, and projects
Hey there newsletters. I'm Nat Bennett, and this is Photo Newsletter, a weekly letter about photos and photography practice.
This week is all about gear.
Social Print Studio Mini Prints
I got a batch of 48 photos from the book I'm working on printed on little wallet sized cards and they are just a delight. Easy to spread out, stackable, shuffle-able. Much better for working out sequences than 4x6 photo stock prints. Might stick a few in my wallet and use 'em as business cards.
Updated Monument Review
I use a Monument to store my RAW files and backup my phone images. It's still easy and effective. I have two SD cards that I swap out when I come home with my main camera, and the iPhone automatically sends photos to it even when I'm out of the house.
However, now that I've been using it for about six months I have a caveat on my still-otherwise-positive review. The clients -- the software that runs on my phone and my laptop that I use to view photos and manage uploads -- is just kind of... janky. They crash more than I'm used to from modern native apps, and they occasionally get into weird states where like, I can only do one upload and after that I have to restart the client or they'll mysteriously fail.
This doesn't seem to cause any problems for the backup system itself, and they're being updated pretty regularly so its possible the dev team is in the process of smoothing this out, but it also might be a signal that there are deeper problems in the software.
Lenses, lenses
I'm itching to drop the aperture on my main camera body again. The NIKKOR Z 24-200mm f/4-6.3 has been surprisingly fun but I miss my zooms, man.
And I'm getting closer to the goal I set for buying the next lens. So I've been thinking about which one I'd actually get again.
It's actually a question of which project do next.
The first one that caught my eye is the NIKKOR Z MC 105mm f/2.8. This is a macro lens, so that means getting very close up to very small things. It'd be perfect for flower shots, so I could do a more deliberate series on those. Maybe an "urban botany of Berkeley" project. Would probably be good for a series I kind of started accidentally of "hands cutting vegetables," though the working range might be a little tight. It's also in a standard portrait focal length, so I could use it to take classic, formal portraits, and to get a more cinematic look on candid documentary shots.
However, that lens doesn't go all the way down to f/1.8. So if I decide to do a very formal-portrait oriented project I'd probably get the NIKKOR Z 85mm f/1.8, in order to get maximum foreground/background separation and really emphasize the people in the portraits.
The main idea I have in mind here is a walk. One way I might structure the next big pop-up newsletter would be specifically as a portrait project, walking and photographing the people in a specific area. I've also been thinking about a project oriented around getting together with friends over the winter. The extra stop-and-a-half of light between f/1.8 and f/2.8 makes the biggest different indoors and at night, which is when I'd likely be taking those pictures.
The big drawback with both of these lenses is that they're pretty big, so they draw attention to themselves. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes a project really demands equipment that says "Hello! I am a Photography! I taking your Portrait!" But sometimes I want to draw less attention to myself, and just generally have less gear to fuss with. The Ricoh and the iPhone both excel in those conditions -- which is why this one is last -- but then I miss the handling of the Z6, the flexibility of the full frame RAW files, and I still have just not gotten used to the 28mm-equivalent lenses.
So I've also been thinking about the NIKKOR Z 40mm f/2. This one has the upside of also being pretty inexpensive, as these things go. It's tiny, but still has a respectable aperture, and would give me the option of still carrying the Z6 but with a much lower profile. This would probably be the best camera for that "winter dinner with friends" project, since it would draw so much less attention to itself than a longer lens.
As I'm writing this, though, I remember that this is still shorter than the range I'm most comfortable in. My favorite lens of all time is still my Nikon AF-S DX Micro-NIKKOR 40mm f/2.8G, and if I've done the math right that's equivalent to a 65mm lens on a full frame camera. Nikon doesn't make a prime lens of that length but they do make a NIKKOR Z MC 50mm f/2.8.
I don't know exactly why I loved that 40mm macro, there was just something really right about the pictures that it took for me. The MC 50mm is a little bit of a compromise lens, which could be good or bad. It's not as small as the 40mm f/2, it doesn't let in as much light or separate the backgrounds as much as the 80mm f/1.8, and it wouldn't pick out detail or give me the work distance the way the 105mm f/2.8 could. On the other hand, it's pretty small, has a pretty wide aperture, has a pretty close working distance, and would still outperform the lenses I know I'm mentally comparing it to in bokeh and background separation because of differences between physics of the ASP-C and full frame systems. It wouldn't be the absolute best at any of the projects I mentioned above, but I could probably use it do any of them -- except the most formal portraits.
Finally -- I haven't looked at all into third-party lenses, but it's possible that there's one out there that has some really compelling combination of features.