Photographers say, "with a bokeh so dreamy that it's ..." and this lens has that dreamy bokeh quality. It blends the out-of-focus area more beautifully than usual, more pastel-softly, so, good for portraits, and with reflective glints it shows the shape of its aperture, by its flecks of reflected light you can count the edges on a glint like translucent snowflakes.
I get great closeups of food with it.
It has an incredibly shallow depth of field at close quarters, that is, a thin wall of focus. A wall of focus so thin the wall could be thin as paper. If a person's face you must decide if you want the eyes in focus or the tip of the nose, one or the other, but not both. All that out of focus, along with its glints, lends a sexy quality, even to food, like this:
I also do not see on Ken's list Nikon 105mm f2.0, I don't know what compelled me to read the reviews on Amazon but it was there that my interest in the lens became stoked. They are all lauding the lens for being a superior portrait lens and I don't really care so much about that. Plus the lenses I have do all that too. These people tell you how much they love this 105mm f2.0 lens.
But then Ken's list includes a ridiculous and unobtainable wide-angle lens. There is no reason for including on a list of Nikon's 10 best lenses a relic novelty lens that nobody can buy even if they could find one.
It was made back when Nikon was still great enough and crazy enough to make things just because they could. It always cost a significant fraction of what the average American family earns in a year, and used ones today sell for about the same real price as when new: about $5,000 to $20,000.
I lusted after the 13mm ever since I was a kid in the 1970s. I saw one on display at Nikon House in Rockefeller Center in New York City in the 1970s, and saw one again in early 2008, from which I'll be penning a review one of these days.
Nikon only made these to special order, and only made a few hundred of them across 20 years. Customers who took factory delivery in Japan were treated to a ceremony where the lens was blessed by a Shinto priest. I've only seen two in my life, both in captivity, and never seen one in the field.
Let's go look at one on Craigslist. [Nikkor 13mm] Nope.
Let's look at Amazon. Nope.
Let's check eBay. Yes.
NIKON 13mm f5.6 AIS "HOLY GRAIL" EXTREMELY RARE
Price: US $33,000.00
BECAUSE OF THE HIGH VALUE OF THIS LENS, I WILL DELIVER IT BY HAND. PLEASE CONTACT ME BEFORE BIDDING/PURCHASING THIS LENS SO THAT WE CAN WORK OUT A DELIVERY SCHEDULE AND PRICE. IF THE BUY IT NOW IS MET I WILL DELIVER INSIDE THE US FREE, WITHIN A FEW MONTHS WHEN OUR SCHEDULES ALIGN. OUTSIDE OF THE US, DEPENDING ON THE TRAVEL EXPENSE, SHIPPING MAY BE AS HIGH AS $2000. OF COURSE YOU MAY TRAVEL TO MEET ME HERE, FREE OF CHARGE. ITEM WILL BE INSPECTED UPON DELIVERY, PAID FOR, AND FEEDBACK LEFT, BEFORE THE LENS LEAVES MY SIGHT.
Goodness. Deliver by hand. The dickens, you say.
Diagram from Nikkor.com
Yes, but what do the pictures taken with this lens look like? Because I am sensing Ken is doing a bit of bragging by mentioning an unobtainable lens. And if it were so great then why not make more of them? I expect because technology improved.
Maybe they have. Maybe by making it they realized how little is gained by so much extravagance and learned from those mistakes and did redesign it to something better. The one that I own. The 14-24mm. Perhaps an all around better lens. The things the lens does, correct for distortion, you can use a ruler with straight lines, the 14-24 does too. Plus a lot of other things besides.
So what do the photos taken by this lens look like? They had better be great.
From Wikipedia.
If that's not distortion, then what am I seeing? Those pillars are not straight up and down.
Want to see what the 14-24 can do in the hands of an amateur? Fine, I'll show you.
Same dealio, Amelio. Perspective.
I win. And I wasn't even trying.
Incidentally, those salads won me $100.00.
The thing is, I was here a few weeks previously and was served a salad so pathetic, so lame, so limp, that I felt abused. Salad-abused. I know these people know better than to vinegar-board lettuce leaves. I pushed wilted drowned lettuce leaves around my plate and felt sorry for myself.
Then another dinner out there in short order and I said, "Hey, know what? Let me make the salads. I'll do the whole thing. I'll do all of it. I'll bring it all out. They agreed.
When the moment came to assemble salads we put on our voices and proceeded to be silly. I recall playing salad assembly and being silly. That's all.
"Zhese is zeh mountain and zhese is zeh snow upon zeh mountain. Zhese is zeh detritus, zeh scree, zeh rubble zat collects at zeh bottom of zeh mountain, but zeh snow must NOT TOUCH!"
It is simple iceberg wedge with homemade blu cheese dressing. The mountain scree is unusual combination of raw fruit, melon, vegetables, nuts, crunchy light sourdough croutons
* watermelon chunks
* large mango chunks
* large cucumber squares
* large avocado chunks
* large peach chunks
all fairly the same size, large.
* grapes
* toasted pecans
So all that is mixed in a pile and none of it is dressed. So that each diner can enjoy the unadulterated pure watermelon flavor and be happy with that, then some chunk of fruit will touch blu cheese dressing by accident and allowing the blue cheese smudge on their watermelon that occurred on their plate, the diner eats it anyway and realizes how amazing the combination is with each individual thing, avocado, grapes, down the line, a bright new combination with each thing.
"Wow."
"Wow."
"Wow."
"Wow."
"Wow," all around the table. Circulating around. It was fun.
It is a remarkable experience to behold a table seated with adults all realizing new and delightful taste-sensations that they all imagine they discovered on their own and thought of themselves. There was a dispute over who takes the remaining pint of blu cheese dressing home.
A few days later a small card appeared in the mail reading, "Thanks for the salads" with $100 gift charge card to Whole Foods, with a WF store conveniently about 6 blocks away up 11th Avenue.
When I used the card, I told the checkout person this story. The man could have been a GQ model. Teeth so bright they blind your eyes. Pleasant as can be. He was genuinely interested in a salad so good that one of the guests there sends a gift card. He asked tons of questions about specific salad elements as he had the time smiling throughout as he related his own similar salad success story with great enthusiasm.
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