Street Photography with the Nikkor 500mm Reflex lens
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Perhaps I’m developing a “style” or something but much of my street photography is starting to look the same. For example, if I was to replace a block of color or swap a head from one pic to another, I’m not sure I’d notice later. While I can’t say yet if I think it is a good thing or a bad thing, the sameness is something I observed recently while working on my website. Frustrating at first, it became a catalyst to try new things and a few old things but with new perspectives. Eventually, I came up with a plan, something that required me to first analyze what I was currently doing.
My typical setup for a street session is ridiculously easy: bring one camera. A Fuji X100F rangefinder… maybe a bag to carry it in. The small, mirrorless camera is the most versatile of all the digitals I own, despite being locked to a 23mm lens. While out on a session, the X100F is either invisible to those around me or it’s a conversation-starter with it’s classically smart looks. 24 megapixels of sensor resolution come in handy as I typically shoot to crop later. Technique wise, I’m either riding shotgun in a car, lining up snaps perpendicular to the subject or I’m on foot and waiting for someone to walk into my focusing zone.
When crafting my plan to change things up, I researched a bit by observing what others were doing. I watched lots of videos of Youtubers with the 80–200mm lens and liked what I saw. I jumped online and found a used, 1980s old-school Nikkor 80–200mm AF ED lens that weighs 30 pounds but has a push-pull sleeve to adjust zoom. The barrel also works to adjust focus, which I need as the lens is attached to a Nikon Z50 (the Z50 can power lots of autofocus lenses fine, but because the mirrorless body needs the FTZ (Nikon F-mount to Z-mount) adapter, the autofocus feature goes out the window).
