Z6 + 85 1.8 S great pocket portrait kit

spb_stan

Senior Member
I recently got the 85 1.8 S and I am very pleased with it. I shot one session with it for a client 2 days ago hours after getting it. The feel of the silky smooth damped wide focusing ring is very comfortable to manual focus. The first shots with it were for a client and everyone was pleased.

A few hours ago I met with my actor friend Anastasia who wanted to borrow a camera to shoot a video of an actors master class. I set up my D7000 with its lit lens and showed her how to using in auto mode for video. While she was reading the read display I snapped a photo of her across the small Georgian Cafe table. The sun was down and it was pretty dark so went down to 1/20 hand held, ISO400 f/2.2. the one shot was a keeper. It caught her unaware of being photographed. I prefer relaxed faces for portraits and not big grins. a few minutes later snapped one using bounce flash in TTL BL mode at f4.o, 1/100 85mm and iso 80.

I highly recommend this lens, the only fast 85 that is equally sharp at the corners as the center. I have test a friend's 85 1.8 S against all my fast short telephoto primes and knew it was good, when stopping by a camera stores to ask when the 85 S would be in stock. I was heading to the studio and had no intent to buy a lens, just to find out when their first shipment would arrive. The salesgirl said, it just came in 2 hours ago and nothing has been unpacked.I bought it immediately. Here, with the 20% VAT it was right at $1,000.

#1 No flash, slow shutter, dim cafe only ambient light
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#2 BL flash
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spb_stan

Senior Member
Thanks, those wee the first shots taken with it but I have had more time to play with it and do some commercial sessions and the more I use it the less my other portrait lenses don't get used. Here are two of a friend when we were just in a bar last week deciding what to do for the evening. Not bad for 49 years old. Both of these used 1 off camera flash, f/2.8 1/80 ISO 200 for the top and 100 for the second one. Both were exposed for ambient and the flash set for balanced fill. The TTL BL mode of Nikon flash is the best use of fill in the industry. Just set exposure on the camera for 1-2 stops under exposed for ambient in Matrix metering and turn on the flash in BL balanced flash and subject is 1 stop or so above ambient so context is maintained but the subject becomes separated from the background with just enough context. In the top one I held the flash to the camera right to remove shadows from her face and on the bottom it was held arm's length camera left points right at her face with a snap on grid.
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spb_stan

Senior Member
Here is another taken an hour later, using the same setup of a single hand held light to camera left pointed right at her on manual very low power. Set the exposure to a 2 stops under exposed and manually adjusted flash for her upper torso was properly exposed which came out to be 1/128 power with a SB900 I used a wider cell snap on grid to reduce the spill and held it close enough so the relative fall off to the bar just beyond her was not too bright. The Z6 and 85 1.8 S is a great combination for casual shots like this because it can be shot one handed easily so the other hand can hold the flash. Big gripped DSLRs would be a handful. This was on a slower shutter speed so a larger camera would have suffered from one hand shake
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