saph wrote:
Here's a glimpse of the "Ben made me get it" lens. (yes Ben, don't blame Curtis for this one, he's not even into RF!) Complete with a tacky "for Nikon" strap, to keep the Nikon purists happy.
The LTM Nikkor 5cm f2 H on its native Leica IIIf. Both were made somewhere in the early/mid fifties. These RF Nikkors for the Leica thread mount caught the eye of David Douglas Duncan just as the Korean War was getting started in 1950. He and his fellow photographers dumped their Leica and Contax lenses when they accompanied American troops into the war. His book "This is War" has photos that really immerse one into what it might have been like in the middle of the battles (as much as one can be reading a hard cover book with shiny pages on the kitchen counter). He also writes about the war. I have only gone through the beginning of the book so far; he describes the war both with the ground level view of an embedded photographer and a strategic look at what all machinations among the key leaders at that time (both political and military) led to such a destructive outcome.
Back to the story of the Nikkors in the book. The photographers didn't take the 5cm f2, which had been in manufacture since 1948. They took the 5cm 1.5 instead, which I presume was to pull as much light in as they could onto the Kodak XX film they had with them. The 5cm 1.5 was quickly superceded by the 5cm 1.4 S, which then lasted throughout the Nikon RF era but must not have been available at the start of the war. They also had the 8.5cm f 2 and the 13.5cm f3.5 (that second one Ben's sporting now on his M10). The Barnack Leicas of that era would have needed accessory viewfinders for the longer lenses,since the built in viewfinder's frameline only covers the 50mm view. Focusing and accounting for parallax correction with those longer lenses couldn't have been easy to say the least. I think I already mentioned how tiny the separate rangefinder on these Barnack Leicas is, with its little patch for focusing.
Given all those challenges, the quality of the photos on this book, which was first published soon after the war, are just amazing. Really tells you "This is War".
Thanks for sharing this, it inspired me to find of of Mr Duncan’s books, many of which can be had for just a few dollars used and ordered 3 of them to look at and then donate to the library if I don’t want to keep them. I can already see his use of incredible deep depth of field in some of the works of his on the Internet, it is a favorite type of photo I like to make where there is the picture inside the picture and then another inside that where the eye is really drawn in and in deeper into the photo. I look forward to these and on a side note, hope to visit the WW1 museum we have here in KC this week. Want open today due to the holiday.
