As part of a master plan to hopefully be able to retire someday, I recently took a new position at UT as "Assistant Director Digital Media." I pretty much do what I've always done for UT football but now they've added 19 other sports to my responsibilities.
As I looked at how to plan for this transition, I looked at Nikon seriously for the first time in 19 years. UT already had a nice new 400mm, a 200-400mm zoom, the short glass, and 2- D3s bodies. If I switched systems, I could sell off all of my Canon gear, get UT to buy some more Nikon stuff, and pocket a bunch of money to pay down debt, etc..
So I took the plunge and began the monumental task of selling off everything I'd amassed in the Canon system since 1992. It was not a trivial few weeks. Some days I went to the post office with as many as ten boxes. Other big days involved carefully packing up my trusty 600, 500, 400, and 200L lenses, respectively.
Nikon was good enough to send me a bunch of gear to try out and it's going pretty well with one exception...
I have been manually focusing my longer lenses for my entire career. Most of us stopped this practice when we left Nikon the first time and got Canon in the early 90's. But I have always enjoyed shooting tight, especially in football, and I could never figure out a way to get the AF system to not get fooled all the time by linemen passing in front of my view of the QB in the pocket. So, I kept up this relatively antiquated practice for my whole career. The longer the lens, the more I manually focus. The shorter the focal length, the less AF I do.
I was doing great until "the switch." The focusing rings go the other direction (note I didn't even say wrong), as do the aperture rings, shutter speed dials, exposure compensation, and even the lens mount is reversed on the Nikon gear.
My issue was every time I manual focused the lens, I went the wrong way, ruining every shot. Even when I put my mind to it, I still ended up daydreaming and my fingers just twitched the wrong direction and "bam," I was in fuzzball-land.
So, I got this crazy idea...
I got on sportsshooter.com and put out a message looking for an old Nikkor 400mm f/3.5 EDIF lens. I told people I didn't want to spend more than $1200 or so and it was just a temporary lens for me to get this manual focus thing down again. I reasoned that if I was shooting an all MF lens, I would eventually learn to go the "other/wrong/opposite" way.
My old friend (he's really old) Byron Hetzler called me from CO to tell me that he had exactly the lens I wanted... all he had to do was find it. He wasn't sure where it was, "maybe in the garage or in a closet, but I'm pretty sure I still have it," said Byron. The next day, I got a message, "found it!" My check passed his lens a few days later. I took it out to football practice and shot it for the first time.
At first, I was terrible. "Close, far, close, far...." I had to work away from other media so as not to embarrass myself. "Close, far..." I shot a few frames. One sharp, three out. I shot a few more. Five sharp, two soft. And so on. After twenty minutes, I went back to face the awful truth of the Mac 27" monitor. But all I needed was about fifteen images, and Ruth was there to back me up too. I had what I needed. Score!
That night, I sent a message to Byron to ask him where he got it from. He told me from Gary Casky whom I had known as a student at Marquette in Milwaukee. Gary was the UPI shooter that replaced Ralph Schauer who had been a wire service fixture for years in Milwaukee. Well, I was FB friends with Gary and I got to thinking... So I asked him if he remembered where he got the 400 from. A few days went by and he finally got back to me. "Yes Patrick, that is the lens you used to shoot President Reagan and a some Brewer games before you dumped me for AP back in 1985."
And so it has been confirmed. The lens I now shoot practice with once belonged to the UPI bureau in Milwaukee prior to even 1980. The thing works great, it's tack sharp, even "razor," as Gary Bogdon was so fond of saying back in the day.
All I had to do to make it truly useful is fashion a lens shade out of an old flip card from a UT game so I could shoot back-lit. I don't know how those guys used to shoot that thing with such a shallow shade, but it works great with a little gaffer's tape. And now you know... the rest of the story.
As I looked at how to plan for this transition, I looked at Nikon seriously for the first time in 19 years. UT already had a nice new 400mm, a 200-400mm zoom, the short glass, and 2- D3s bodies. If I switched systems, I could sell off all of my Canon gear, get UT to buy some more Nikon stuff, and pocket a bunch of money to pay down debt, etc..
So I took the plunge and began the monumental task of selling off everything I'd amassed in the Canon system since 1992. It was not a trivial few weeks. Some days I went to the post office with as many as ten boxes. Other big days involved carefully packing up my trusty 600, 500, 400, and 200L lenses, respectively.
Nikon was good enough to send me a bunch of gear to try out and it's going pretty well with one exception...
I have been manually focusing my longer lenses for my entire career. Most of us stopped this practice when we left Nikon the first time and got Canon in the early 90's. But I have always enjoyed shooting tight, especially in football, and I could never figure out a way to get the AF system to not get fooled all the time by linemen passing in front of my view of the QB in the pocket. So, I kept up this relatively antiquated practice for my whole career. The longer the lens, the more I manually focus. The shorter the focal length, the less AF I do.
I was doing great until "the switch." The focusing rings go the other direction (note I didn't even say wrong), as do the aperture rings, shutter speed dials, exposure compensation, and even the lens mount is reversed on the Nikon gear.
My issue was every time I manual focused the lens, I went the wrong way, ruining every shot. Even when I put my mind to it, I still ended up daydreaming and my fingers just twitched the wrong direction and "bam," I was in fuzzball-land.
So, I got this crazy idea...
I got on sportsshooter.com and put out a message looking for an old Nikkor 400mm f/3.5 EDIF lens. I told people I didn't want to spend more than $1200 or so and it was just a temporary lens for me to get this manual focus thing down again. I reasoned that if I was shooting an all MF lens, I would eventually learn to go the "other/wrong/opposite" way.
That night, I sent a message to Byron to ask him where he got it from. He told me from Gary Casky whom I had known as a student at Marquette in Milwaukee. Gary was the UPI shooter that replaced Ralph Schauer who had been a wire service fixture for years in Milwaukee. Well, I was FB friends with Gary and I got to thinking... So I asked him if he remembered where he got the 400 from. A few days went by and he finally got back to me. "Yes Patrick, that is the lens you used to shoot President Reagan and a some Brewer games before you dumped me for AP back in 1985."
And so it has been confirmed. The lens I now shoot practice with once belonged to the UPI bureau in Milwaukee prior to even 1980. The thing works great, it's tack sharp, even "razor," as Gary Bogdon was so fond of saying back in the day.
All I had to do to make it truly useful is fashion a lens shade out of an old flip card from a UT game so I could shoot back-lit. I don't know how those guys used to shoot that thing with such a shallow shade, but it works great with a little gaffer's tape. And now you know... the rest of the story.
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