An Afternoon With Zeiss

[Mike Farley]

The title of this post is slightly misleading. Certainly, just before Xmas, I indeed had an afternoon's street photography in London with Zeiss. Except that Zeiss did not show up. The occasion was an event organised by Amateur Photographer, in conjunction with Zeiss, to try out the Zeiss Batis 40 lens for Sony cameras. Zeiss sent along one of their ambassadors, Ed Norton, but failed to show up with the lenses. Cue some frantic scrambling by the AP team to obtain sufficient Batis lenses of any focal length. The upshot was that I was offered a choice of a lens from either end of the range, an 18 or 135. Purely on the groundfs of playing safe, I should have gone for the latter but thought that the former would be more challenging. It was, but an extreme wide-angle can be very useful when shooting on the street.

The weather that afternoon was wet and it rained just about as hard as any of the inclement days of this winter. Hardly ideal conditions for photography or trying out a lens. By the end I was well pleased to reach our final destination at Park Cameras. We had started from County Hall, walked along the Soth Bank, over Waterloo Bridge to the ice rink at Somerset House and from there along Regent Street for the Xmas lights. Halfway through, the AP team had somehow managed to acquire some more Batis 40 lenses and I swapped the 18 I was using on the basis that it was a more useful focal length. Not that conditions were really conducive to evaluating the lens when it was dark and wet.

Afterwards, I sent some feedback to Nigel Atherton, AP's editor, together with a shot apiece from each of the lenses. A while back a short video of the event came out (link below) in which I briefly appear around 38 seconds in - blink and you will miss me - and I thought that would be it.

https://vimeo.com/389763710

But no, in this week''s AP there is a two page advertorial which includes one of my images (see below). It was a grab shot, taking advantage of a fleeting opportunity at the foot of the stairs leading onto Waterloo Bridge. I was talking to another participant at the time, saw the image and took it without disrupting the flow of the conversation. The other person did not seem to register what I had done. The lens was a bit too wide, so I had to crop in and correct the converging verticals, which took a while. It would not have happened had I opted for the 135; better too wide than too long especially on the street. AP describes it as a moody black and white shot. And attributes it to the Batis 40. No matter, both are cracking lenses worthy of the Zeiss name and quite possibly the money the company asks for them.

Umbrella

Umbrella.jpg (87.62 KiB) Viewed 2159 times

[davidb]

Congratulations Mike on making AP again. Nice shot!

And well done AP for fulfilling an event that was abandoned by it's instigator.

[Iggy]

Mike wrote:
I sent some feedback to Nigel Atherton, AP's editor, together with a shot apiece from each of the lenses.

Well done Mike getting your dramatic image capturing the weather conditions and more published in AP.
Good thinking sending it to the editor.
Saw you in the video too by pausing at 40 sec. Just about recognised you in spite of the camouflage.