What originally was supposed to be a day to get a little practice in with using strobes on location quickly turned into a day of natural lighting instead. I had been admiring the Ai-S Manual Focus Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 for the bokeh it can produce at wide open apertures. Luckily enough a friend of mine owned this lens but was also more than willing to let me borrow it for a few days to get a feel for it.
The concept I was after for this particular shoot required a very shallow depth of field and long story short this became kind of impossible to do along with a strobe without having an ND gel and/or an ND filter for the lens. I ended up ditching the strobe and just grabbing a few reflectors and going off the ambient light already present.
In the end i'm glad I did as it gave me a chance to experiment with just reflectors and ambient light. Having to use a manual focus lens was not without it's challenges but it helps add a human element to the shot. The soft focus in particular shots helped bring forth the look I had wanted, without having to spend time in Photoshop for less than perfect results.
There's more shots to come as these are just a few of the ones I had taken on Saturday. Looking forward to do more with this lens, especially once spring is in full bloom.
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