... Journal Entry
Turns out one of my favourite lenses to use with my F80 film camera has become my 85mm f1.8. This so called portrait or short telephoto lens seems to fit with my "minds eye" vision which often tends to mentally crop out the near foreground of a scene to focus in on a subject.
8This is clearly illustrated when taking photographs of groups of flowers where the 85 can be used both to kill the foreground and its wider aperture (f1.8 in this case) to blur the background to good effect.
Above is my lovely old Nikon AF Nikkor 85mm f1.8 D which I use on my Nikon F80 along with CineStill 400D film to exploit just these characteristics to good effect.
Sharpness and blur, light and shade, creating pictorially something out of nothing. A study in tone, colour and texture, creative possibilities that only a fast 85 makes possible. I really like this focal length and the photographs I am able to produce with it. It encourages me to see the world in a different way.
As well as kills the background I also use this lens to limit the sharpness of foreground objects too when composition demands to isolate a subject and make it stand out and give that lovely feeling of isolation in the picture.
I can Alsop use it to lovely soft, crumbly pictures of a subjects against but with fabulous three dimensional feel to them, this is one of the great virtues of a fast 85.
Finally, there is that gentle compression of perspective that the 85 brings to a picture that helps give a composition a sense of cohesion whist, as ever, keeping the subject clearly delineated from its background, an effect which is pleasing to the eye.
The 85mm prime, a firm favourite and much used friend.