Is a non ai Nikkor H 85 1.8 going to be too sharp for portraits?

gone · Mar 22, 2021

The budget non ai Nikkor 85 1.8 and N70 body I bought is on the way (which gives me several days to start reading the N70 manual, which may not be enough time, LOL), and already I'm wondering if the lens will work? The specs and reviews are great, but the words "razor sharp" have been mentioned several times.

Previous attempts at using Nikon lenses for head and upper body shots have fizzled. At times the 85 2 would make beautiful images sorta like a Leica w/ soft bokeh, then a few shots later it would decide to have only the front of the face in focus w/ an abrupt shift around the ears, giving you a moon face. Very unpredictable. Tried the AF 85 1.8 D. Nice lens, but I don't shoot AF cameras anymore. Even the fabled 105 2.5 didn't work. That one was definitely way too sharp even wide open.

So is anyone using one of these for portraits? There's always the nuclear option of an R 90 Elmarit or Summicron w/ adapter, but those are big bucks.

Horatio · Mar 22, 2021

The N70 does not have the AI metering tab release. I doubt you'll be able to use that lens without grinding away some of the aperture ring, or damaging the metering tab, unless one or the other has been modified already. AFAIK, the N70 does not have stop down metering.

George Mann · Mar 22, 2021

You may want to try a soft filter next time.

Horatio · Mar 22, 2021

George Mann said:
You may want to try a soft filter next time.

Or panty hose.

Pieter12 · Mar 22, 2021

If sharpness is an issue a Tiffin ProMist will solve that.

Dan Fromm · Mar 22, 2021

If you want control and predictability, don't use auto focus and set shutter speed and aperture manually.

RTFM! You can download it from: https://www.butkus.org/chinon/nikon/nikon_f70/nikon_f70.htm See p. 106, the lens you are waiting for can't be used on it. It will have to be AI'd before it is safe to mount on an N70.
As I read it,

After the lens has been AI'd, shoot some portraits at apertures from f/1.8 to f/11 and then you'll know.

wiltw · Mar 22, 2021

momus said:
T At times the 85 2 would make beautiful images sorta like a Leica w/ soft bokeh, then a few shots later it would decide to have only the front of the face in focus w/ an abrupt shift around the ears, giving you a moon face. Very unpredictable
.

Your description is very revealing, as it inicates something is changing unexpected, to CAUSE the effects in the photo that you are seeing! What might change?

If in AF mode, the AF plane gets changed slightly forward or back, causing the plane of focus to relocate
If in automatic mode, the f'/stop is chainging, and if the change is to the max aperture of the lens, the DOF beomes very very shallow, causing the blurred ears

The remedy for the 'unexpected change' is to TURN OFF automation! Put lens on AF Off mode, and set exposure with Manual setting of aperture and shutter speed.
Using soft focus filters helps in making wrinkles somewhat 'disappear' (becomes less well defined) but does NOTHING for your complaint about UNEXPECTED CHANGES happening from one shot to the next.

reddesert · Mar 22, 2021

Respectfully submitted, it may help to concentrate a little on technique rather than chase lenses for the magic one. People have made good portraits with all of those lenses.

- The N70 is an AF camera (and not compatible with non-AI lenses as others have mentioned). Of course you can use it in MF mode, but you mention rejecting the 85/1.8 because it was an AF lens, so I'm confused.

- The 85/2 where you're complaining about focus shifts is an MF lens, so focus shifts aren't coming from the AF system. Lenses don't just decide to do things. Maybe you or the subject moved, or the aperture changed as wiltw suggested, or the lens is damaged and has play in the barrel. (I had a well-used 35mm lens like this once; the play was obvious if you held the front ring of the lens. A small internal screw that fixed the front barrel had fallen out.)

- If a lens is "too sharp" wide open then maybe look into a soft filter, or consider what you are trying to achieve. Most lenses are at least trying to achieve sharpness. A lens that is pretty sharp in focus, creates a greater distinction between in-focus and out-of-focus areas, which is often something that people want.

gone · Mar 22, 2021

I wasn't getting what you would call focus shift w/ the 85 2, or at least I don't think it was. It was more of an ugly and abrupt cut off where it went from the in focus eyes and nose to the further back areas like the ears. My good (expensive) lenses would give nice sharp pupils, then smoothly soften out the rest. The 85 2 didn't soften really, it blurred. Hard to explain but it looked odd. Stopped down, the lens was a keeper. Nice and sharp w/ great IQ. My old non ai H 50 2 was a perfect lens and just a little soft wide open, but an 85 or longer is needed.

Soft filter or the old pantyhose trick if it's too sharp? Might be overkill. Thanks for the tip on the Tiffen filter, but it looks like they cost nearly as much as I paid for the lens! I'll devote a roll of film to trying different things. Of course, I should have thought of all this before buying the lens, but at $80 shipped it was hard to pass up.

film_man · Mar 22, 2021

I think you should just shoot the lens and figure out if it is "too sharp" or not. Out of the dozens of lenses I've shot the only thing that actually was "too sharp" was the Zeiss 50/2 ZM and the Mamiya 6 75/3.5. They were sharp and had very high contrast, making them look harsh. Everything else is workable one way or the other, especially a not-that-fast lens from the 60s.

beemermark · Mar 22, 2021

Horatio said:
The N70 does not have the AI metering tab release. I doubt you'll be able to use that lens without grinding away some of the aperture ring, or damaging the metering tab, unless one or the other has been modified already. AFAIK, the N70 does not have stop down metering.

Yup, non-AI lenses will not work on the N70 and will damage the mount.

narsuitus · Mar 22, 2021

Back in the late 1960s, the pre-AI 85mm f/1.8 Nikkor was the second lens I purchased for my Nikon F. It was a great portrait lens that I used for decades. I had it AI'd by Nikon. It remained my favorite until I purchased the 85mm f/1.4 D AF.

I never found the 85mm f/1.8 too sharp for portraits. The only lens I found to be too sharp was the 105mm f/2.8 micro Nikkor. I had to use a soft focus filter on the macro to mask skin defects.

85mm on Left by Narsuitus, on Flickr

Horatio · Mar 22, 2021

narsuitus said:
Back in the late 1960s, the pre-AI 85mm f/1.8 Nikkor was the second lens I purchased for my Nikon F. It was a great portrait lens that I used for decades. I had it AI'd by Nikon. It remained my favorite until I purchased the 85mm f/1.4 D AF.

I never found the 85mm f/1.8 too sharp for portraits. The only lens I found to be too sharp was the 105mm f/2.8 micro Nikkor. I had to use a soft focus filter on the macro to mask skin defects.

85mm on Left by Narsuitus, on Flickr

Man, now I’m jonesing for one! Thanks a lot.

mawz · Mar 28, 2021

I'll note the 85/1.8D works fine on manual focus cameras (and the N70 is an AF camera anyways, as noted above).
I do prefer the 85/1.8 K (late production version with NIC coatings and AI cosmetics, often mislabelled as an AI lens as the last couple batches were shipped with factory AI rings). It's a delightful lens. It will need an AI conversion to work on an N70 as noted above.
That said, if the 105/2.5 is too sharp, you probably want to look at a really early lens. The 105/2.5 is a superb portrait lens and was used for what is probably the single most famous portrait associated with Nikon's, the famous 'Afghan Girl' National Geographic cover shot (105/2.5 AI-S on Kodachrome)

gone · Mar 28, 2021

I understand your idea reddesert, but w/ portraits you want the best lens for the job that is in your budget, and a good subject. Most of all you want great lighting. Or else!

My gold standards are the Leica R 90 2 Summicron and R 90 2.8 Elmarit lenses, along w/ the Canon FD SSC 85 1.8. I have some great shots from those. Technique don't mean much if you have a lousy lens for the intended purpose, and like most of us here, I've auditioned probably hundreds of lenses after 40 years in photography.

The N70 arrived, along w/ the Nikkor 85 lens. The lens has been AI'D, and looks and feels really well made. It slipped right onto the N70. Hopefully it's just single coated, I'm not sure. There's a couple of rolls of Tri-X waiting. I'll make some portraits, w/ one roll developed in Rodinal and one in D76, and post some results.

RalphLambrecht · Mar 28, 2021

George Mann said:
You may want to try a soft filter next time.

these lensesåredefinitly sharp but, it's far easier to soften a sharp lens than to sharpen a soft lens.

mawz · Mar 29, 2021

It’s easy to determine if the 85 is single-coated, the nameplate will tell you. If it’s a Nikon-H, it’s single coated, a Nikon-H.C is multi-coated. The latter version with a rubber focus ring is also multi-coated

gone · Apr 17, 2021

This lens has an annoying habit of going from sharp to soft too abruptly (the hair!). It's possible to get just the eyes in focus, but you often end up getting more than that sharp. Petra's hair may have been that way when I took the shots, but I doubt it.

mawz · Apr 17, 2021

The DoF limit is pretty much to be expected, if you're shooting wide open.

The focus point in the middle picture is significantly in front of the other two (on the chicken rather than her face), which is why you're seeing her hair so far out of focus.

you need to either stop down for more depth of field, or be picky where you put your focus point.

Any fast short telephoto will behave like this.

Pieter12 · Apr 17, 2021

momus said:
Petra's hair may have been that way when I took the shots, but I doubt it.

The lens is not going to change what's in front of it.

gone · Apr 17, 2021

I'm going to disagree. It's a lens, not 2 eyes, and an 85 lens at that. What's in front of us is the equivalent of a 50 lens, and as we go up from there in focal length, or down, it changes what will appear on the film compared to what we see.
Still think these look off, and not what I'm used to seeing. The shot below is closer to what I'm looking for (from a cheap Mackinon 135 2.5 macro).

No, the Nikon is too sharp all over and makes images I don't like. Probably better to buy a Leica lens and get what I pay for (although the budget Mackinon macro was a much better lens than it should have been). Gonna sell the Nikkor 85 as a specialty chicken lens. It did a good job on her.

btaylor · Apr 17, 2021

A lot of splitting of hairs here, as someone mentioned lighting is a key factor- I really think almost any of the mentioned lenses would do a great job. But I agree on the specialty chicken lens. Man, that’s a good looking bird!

mawz · Apr 19, 2021

I've shot that Makinon before,

It's utter trash opticly, but you're making its lousy resolution and massive spherical abberations at wide apertures work to get the skin smoothing you want.

You're not going to get that look from any 85/90 that's at all decent. The only thing that might give you that sort of look at 85mm is something like an early Jupiter-9 or something equally low resolution.

The Leica lens isn't going to look at all like that Makinon. It's going to look more like the Nikkor 85mm. Smoother rendering but at least as much resolution (a 90mm Summicron-R should have more resolution, not less, than the 85/1.8)

Note the idea that we see 50mm is a myth. The human eye has a field of view closer to a 24mm lens on 35mm, but we tend to focus on somewhere between a 35mm field of view and an 85mm field of view.

I'm going to suggest you try some traditional softening tricks, either a soft focus filter or good old fashioned vaseline on the front element. Or buy some cheap russian glass.

reddesert · Apr 19, 2021

A couple of thoughts: As mawz says the idea that a 50mm is the natural field of view is somewhat artificial. We actually see a wider field of view, but we concentrate on part of the field at a time. Further, we don't actually see a limited depth of field with our eyes, because our brains fill in all the details of objects at different distances (also, our eyes have a smaller entrance aperture than a typical lens, so larger DOF). Depth of field is an artificial photographic construct that we use to draw the attention to the desired areas, when a 3-d scene is represented in a 2-d photograph.

The reasons a lens of say 80-135mm is often used for portraits include that: it forces the photographer to stand back from the subject, which provides a pleasing perspective on facial features; and it can be used at wide aperture to limit DOF and focus attention. If I stand 2 feet away from someone and take a head shot with a 28 mm, it will exaggerate their features and look like a caricature, but it's a true rendering of what it looks like to stand 2 feet from a person's face (IOW the lens sees what is in front of it, like Pieter12 said).

Using a different lens of equal focal length will produce a similar perspective rendering, but if you want to slightly soften the focus there are tricks like mawz suggested, including soft focus filters, smudge on the glass, or the mesh/pantyhose method. These generally work by introducing a little bit of diffraction.

Horatio · Apr 20, 2021

momus said:
Tried the AF 85 1.8 D. Nice lens, but I don't shoot AF cameras.

The N70 is AF. Why don’t you try this lens again?

Is a non ai Nikkor H 85 1.8 going to be too sharp for portraits?

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