A Day Out with the Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 AIS and Nikon D850 DSLR – by Anil Mistry

This lockdown has resulted in me spending a lot of time wandering around with a camera to stay busy and sane. I’m sure many of you can relate.

When not tearing my hair out with frustration and boredom and general life worries, I’ve generally been walking around 5-18 miles a day with my Nikon D850 and various lenses,  photographing random stuff so that I can bring it home and play around in Lightroom to keep me busy.

Due to not having had any work for over two months now, I’ve given up on shooting film altogether for the simple reason that I can’t afford to develop it. I have over 20 rolls waiting in a drawer for the day that I have any spare cash to send them off to a lab.  So digital it is. Thank … for the DSLR.

In this post I’m simply going to share some pictures taken with my Nikon D850 and the Nikkor 50mm F1.2 Ais. I’ll start with a few notes to provide context then let you enjoy the pics.

1. They were all shot in one day- a sunny morning in Brighton, as I wandered around finding interesting scenes in shop windows or interesting people who would let me grab a quick portrait
2. I’m not a big fan of overt “bubbly” bokeh- I find it distracting if not downright annoying, but I do like soft blurred out areas of colour, and this is something I’ve looked to try and capture in some shots.
3. I shot all of the close up shots at f1.2 to see what I could get. The D850’s 1/8000s shutter speed came in extremely handy for this, ensuring I didn’t over expose on a bright day.
4. The high resolution of the D850 also came in very handy when cropping, allowing me to get into interesting areas of a shot with no loss of detail to play with.
5. I shot all the portraits at f4, my favourite aperture setting for street portraits on a 50mm lens. I’ve found f4 controllable for quick focus on a manual lens, and this is where the sharpness kicks in on this particular lens with enough pleasing shallow depth of field to knock the background out of focus.
6. In terms of grading, I used varying combinations of Lightroom and the Nik Collection 2 plugin. I’ve developed a number of my own presets over the years and just enjoy fiddling around with the grades to see what can be achieved.
7. For some reason I’ve fallen in love with the 4×5 / 8×10 aspect ratio, so all my shots have been thus cropped.
8. I wanted my close-up pictures to feel dreamy and romantic- through a combination of the subject I was shooting, the way it was shot, and the grade.

Okay, so in no particular order, here are some shots:

Anil Mistry is a professional photographer and creative director.
You can see more of his work at www.anilmistryphoto.com or on instagram at @anilmistryphoto

Share this post: