In various shots among my 6 galleries (3 of them are private), there are several pictures taken with some of my old manual focus nikkors. Most everyone of my dozen manual focus lenses suffered from fungus damage, because of the way I improperly stored them. Most of them I haven't bothered with, as I now have better options with my new auto-focus lenses instead. But 5 of them as well as one tele-converter would greatly add to my photographic arsenal. My 300mm f4, 200mm micro, and 1.4x tele-converter have all been successfully cleaned at a hefty cost of almost $500. Not having any cash to spare for a while, I decided that the other 3 lenses would have to wait for another time. Two of them though didn't look nearly as badly damaged as all of the others. So I cleaned them myself, and took them out into the field to see if they could skip the costly cleaning. My 35mm f1.4 passed with flying colors, and for months I waited for and occasion to use my 85mm f2 as well. Today proved to be the day. This shot and several others I took on the 4th of July in VanCortlandt Park showed without a doubt that my old reliable portrait lens is still as good as ever, even after 20 years of gathering mold. I'm making sure it will never get mistreated like that again.
It's tough getting proper focus with a manual lens, when the subject's striding towards you as you shoot, as my friend Domingo is here in this photo, but it is possible, and this is what we had to do for every shot back in the old days before autofocus, and we managed to get by somehow. I just need a lot more practice to get my skills back, after years of non-use, but the satisfaction you get from shots like this makes all the effort worth it.
