For most of my former life in photojournalism, I lugged a large, heavy, brass and stainless steel lens to every assignment.The lens, the 180mm f2.8 Nikkor was a quintessential reporter’s lens. It was long enough to capture events at a distance, and fast enough to both make focusing easy (manual in those days) and allow photos indoors in low light.

The 180, like the legendary Nikkor 105mm, was razor sharp. You could use its very narrow depth of field to isolate objects in a busy field making it great for portraits – I once made a portrait of my idol, photog Richard Avedon with the 180, while he sat on a bus bench in West Hollywood, outside the G. Ray Hawkins Gallery. A couple years ago, I donated the 180 along with all the rest of my old Nikon gear to the art department at my old school.

So, now that I’m back in the saddle, I have been hankering for my old friend. I have a modern Nikkor zoom that covers the same focal length, but at f5.6. It’s hard to use indoors and in other low light situations, and its depth of field is not as usefully shallow at full aperture.

So, we went fishing on eBay, and found a gently used 180 f2.8, a model that’s been updated with auto focus. On my ‘new’ digital Nikons it has the equivalent focal length of 250mm (another of my very favorite film-era lenses was the Leica 240mm f2.8 – so I’m pleased with this state of affairs).

The new lens arrived last night, it’s lighter by two-thirds than its manual predecessor but retains the cherished sharpness and razor-thin depth of field. One of the first pictures, a portrait of  Tiger Lily (friend Scott’s King Charles Cavalier Spaniel) illustrates the possibilities. Snapped at the kitchen table this A.M. – ISO 800…

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