The first camera i ever owned was a CANON T90. It was an incredible curvy, 250th sync, hi tech looking thing and it made me think i was the mustard. I’d used NIKON F3s and FM2s that belonged to my boss for a few months but the T90 I bought and owned.
Great. I had a camera.
I stuck a 50mm f hardly anything on it and it made the world look AMAZING. But then, I stuck a soppy 30something to 300andsomething mm lens on it and it made the world look just rubbish!?
I realised there and then that cameras didn’t matter a hoot. The thing that REALLY mattered was the glass you put in front of it.
The T90 is long gone, ran under a tap of cold water by an ex girlfriend as a reward for a real or imagined (i can’t remember) act of unfaithfulness and these days I’m very lucky to have flagship cameras in abundance. It’s EASY for me to dismiss good camera bodies as irrelevant but ever since my T90 days i’ve stuck by what I learned and I’ve always made sure I buy lenses first and bodies second.
And on the whole, apart from a continued relationship with wide zoom lenses (some of which are STILL soppy) I’ve stuck to f2.8 lenses or brighter and it’s fair to say that most things have been sharp.
But a month or so ago i received my NIKON 85mm f1.4!
GOSH.
Seriously, this lens is so SHARP it’s kind of…daunting :)
I’m a lover of the good old 50mm f1.4 and it just produces great results over and over again. But honestly, if you’ve used it and know how sharp that is…the 85 blows it away! :)
It’s seriously challenging medium format…in fact…to my eyes…it may even surpass it.
Now i’m not going to drift into any technical mumbo…i wouldn’t know how to. I just feel this lens is SO good that it’s right to say that 1 I’ve used it extensively and 2 I’ve found it astonishingly good.
If this lens is a sign of where NIKON lens production is going then the future is going to be VERY bright indeed.
So there you are: A very very rare John Wright equipment review thing. In summary: NIKON 85mm f1.4: VERY VERY GOOD THING
