I had a fun photoshoot the other day.  It was all outside and the weather was agreeable so it was a perfect project to use the best camera+lens combos that I have.  I could have titled this post, “Portrait Shoot with Hanfu in the Warm Early Georgia Fall” but to be honest, in this era of noise and content creation deluge that we’re all swimming in, nothing gets my work out there more than the above SEO pandering post title: “Nikon 200mm f/2 vs Nikon 105mm f/1.4 Portraits”  That simple baity “vs” in it is normally an attempt to knock down one and justify the purchase of the other, but for this post it’s really more of a celebration of how both can be used on the same shoot.  That is if you don’t ever need a wide angle, and have lots of room to compose and of course somewhere to put down the heavy 200mm. 😉  If you’ve been reading along my sprawling blog you know I love almost every lens, both expensive and cheap, as these photographic tools have untapped potential more than any creative could ever squeeze out of it.

My most favorite portrait lenses: The Nikkor 200mm f/2 VR and 105mm f/1.4E.  Two lenses separated by about 12+ years of development (2004 vs 2016?), but both displaying the optical design prowess of Nikon.  (the Nikkor 85mm f/1.4D and 105mm f/2.8 Micro VR and Canon 85mm f/1.2L are in a slightly lower tier for different reasons and situations!)

So here are the colorful photos I got from shooting my favorite portrait lenses with older cameras.  Why older DSLRs like the D700 and D600?  Well, because they work as good as they did when they were released.  These cameras were capable of shooting for magazines and movie posters back in the not too distant past, so it is definitely still good for today.  And if you think these are “old,” well just wait until you get into film photography…

But seriously this is not a post to get pageviews (which gets me nothing monetary by the way).  It also doesn’t get me “sponsorship” from camera brands.  I’ve never been sent a camera or lens to “review/keep.”

It just shows that, man this guy has bought a lot of cameras and lenses for his art…  But these days it just makes SEO sense to put camera and lens titles in posts.  There will always be curious gear oriented people, and if they see that good work can be created with both top notch and humble gear (think Nikon D40), then that’s a good thing for this hobby/passion/industry called photography that we are all involved in.  Buy lenses to take photos, and don’t obsess over the specific camera too much.

These photos were color graded in Nikon Capture NX2, the unsupported ancient OEM software that is the best for getting the most out of Nikon .nef raw files. This is one of the bright and vibrant beauty style of editing that is doable with Nikon files.  Out of the box for many generations Nikons always tend to render a bit dark and not as people friendly as Canon files, but seriously guys and gals, if you put in the time to edit Nikon Raw files, even in the recent free software, you can get results like this that are ready to be printed or sent off to Photoshop for further retouching.  I believe that the majority of folks doing these “retro” camera comparisons in Lightroom with Adobe’s camera raw interpretation of color profiles is missing a bit in terms of getting closer to the metal in my opinion. But this is what works for me, as I’ve been very stubborn in keeping with older yet stable build platforms for my photography.

Above: Nikon D600 + 105mm f/1.4E @ f/1.4
Below: Nikon D700 + 200mm f/2 @f/2

With both lenses in NX2 all the way to NX Studio you can accentuate or get rid of the vignette–a “flaw” when the lenses are shot wide open.  The fall off can look pretty natural if done right, and shadow vignette can actually add to the dynamic range in the corners. The darkening of edges and corners can bring out color you never would have seen if left to the in-camera peripheral illumination removal feature.

If you want to, you can shoot the D700 in a much darker way.  Exposure (at least traditionally) in the digital era is merely a suggestion, as raw editing since the early 2000s has given many paths of where you can take an image.  The photos below are pretty much out of camera D700 files, with minor fiddling of picture profiles and negative exposure comp.  Dark enough to have a cinematic mood or vibe, but definitely not deliverable as client work, at least not for this project.  These are the exact same files that I used as a starting point for my bright “Asian” portrait look.

Also it seems a bit reactionary for some online to now look down on bokeh that obliterates backgrounds.  What’s lost on non portrait photographers is that longer lenses like the 85mm, 105mm, and 200mm and their natural way of rendering backgrounds and compressing/cropping of the scene, are your best friend for de cluttering the background. As pretty as nature is, shooting something at f/11 or deeper can make things stand out and detract–branches making leading lines into faces or lining up too perfectly to eyes, etc.  Shallow depth of field makes retouching much easier.  If you have to manually edit hundreds of photos that take 3 minutes per, then these wide aperture lenses already did much of the airbrush rendering for you first.  And the subjects depicted here would definitely object to being shot at f/8, revealing way too many blemishes.  I do enjoy deep DOF shots in my Sigma Infrared cameras though…

Both of these lenses obviously excel when stopped down for sure but wide open or just stopped down a tiny bit was what helped create the look of all these portraits.  The 200mm f/2 began its lens life as a sports sideline lens, but in turn got picked up by portrait photographers.  I was watching an interview with one of the legendary Japanese Nikon lens designers and he took great delight in having the end users find different unexpected uses for lenses that kinda sorta belong to one industry.  Same thing with the 300mm sports and wildlife lenses being used for swimsuit/model photography back since the 80s.

Some of the product photos are from the Canon 50mm f/1.2 and Fuji GF 35-70mm. This wouldn’t be a typical featured blog post here if there wasn’t a few guest characters/cameras/lenses!

Also, if someone from Laowa is reading this, I’d love to shoot some work with their new 200mm f/2 in EF mount. It’s definitely a rare focal length aperture combo, and it took 3rd party manufacturers two decades to catch up (…maybe) to Nikon and Canon.  So many great choices for photographers these days for sure!  Have a great start to fall everyone, it’s just now starting to get colorful down here in Georgia.