20 x 50=31

By MICHAEL PERKINS

I AM STILL RETRENCHING AND REFRESHING AFTER A FIRST YEAR IN CALIFORNIA which saw me using full auto to a far greater degree than is normal for me. In this honeymoon phase, sensory overload was the word of the day, with new places and experiences cascading with such speed that I found myself shooting reactively, hoping, in many cases, that some of the snaps I took in haste would later be re-done with a finer degree of control. My prescription for this feeling that the process was doing me, instead of the reverse, was to retreat into fully manual work for at least my non-wildlife stuff. This meant re-acquainting myself with the lens that served as the foundation for most of my earliest writings in THE NORMAL EYE some fourteen years ago, a 50mm f/2.

There is something to be said for taking full responsibility for your shots and for using what serves many as “the only lens I need”, regardless of the setting or situation. The more stringent rules of engagement, from framing to exposure calculation to focus, actually work to free a photographer, in that he always knows what to expect of the lens, both in its limitations and its ease and simplicity of operation. The so-called “nifty fifty” is cited by many shooters as not only their go-to, but their entire kit. And for this year, I wanted to investigate some of he best third-party 50’s from the late analog era, 1975-1985 mostly.

A Pentax-M 50mm f/2, built from 1975-1982, adapted for use on a Nikon Z5 body for under $40.

For years, I had stayed on Team Nikon, using an f/1.8 50 manufactured in the late seventies. It was my sole companion for an entire year, comprising much of the work I collected into a book bearing this blog’s name. This year, I had a light-bulb moment and robbed the 50 off the front of my old Minolta SRT-100, truly shooting for free. More recently, after borrowing an old Leica Summicron f/2 from a buddy and driving it around the neighborhood, I became curious about which other 50mm primes from the period would nearly perform as well for less cash, like a lot less. 50’s of every brand were produced in the millions in the late 20th century, being the default kit lens for many models, and are, therefore, the very definition of cheap thrills. Enter the Pentax-M Asahi f/2 seen here (similar to the lenses used by the Beatles on their first cameras, way back in 1964), which I harvested off the internet for 20 dollars American.

And so, with renewed vigor, I’ve decided to shoot everything, not for a year, but at least for the 31 says of December 2025, with just this puppy. It is sharp and light, even with the $15 dumb adaptor that allows it to be mounted to my Nikon Z5. The lens does not share information with the body, but that’s what I am for, supposedly. Let me be honest; I love many auto features. I sometimes even love when my camera anticipates what I need, even when I don’t know what that is. But sometimes you have to go back to basics and remind yourself how to directly make a picture, armed only with your own native cunning and $20 worth of glass.