Last week I talked a little about my 200mm vs my 180mm, both from a previous era of photography.

Today I’d like to take a look at my 40-year-old Nikkor 400mm f/3.5. This lens was the envy of all of us in 1985. I saw them all the time, at press events and big games like OU and OSU football.

One photographer of the era called it a “sweet piece of glass.”

When this lens was new, most photographers couldn’t afford to buy it, so most of the 400mm through 600mm lenses I saw in the field belonged to their employers, like the Dallas Morning News or the Associated Press.

Last month a much younger photographer and I were talking shop, and he kind of scoffed at the idea that I still own, and still use, older camera gear. After all, every time a new camera is announced, one of the selling points is how fast and accurate the autofocus is.

I’m willing to bet that this younger photographer has been using autofocus lenses his whole career, and manual focus is just a novelty. I could hear in his voice the doubts that he had when I told him I was still pretty good at focussing manually. And why wouldn’t I be? I spent the first 20 years of my career with manual-focus lenses.

Flash forward to last week. I was at my last baseball game of the season, Latta vs Cashion. Because of a rain delay, I arrived at Shawnee High School a little early, in time for me to make a few frames of the end of the previous game, Wister vs Preston.

I decided earlier in the day that I wanted to shoot this game with my 400mm, though I couldn’t really say why. Maybe part of it was that I didn’t need to generate dozens of images, since this was the last game of the season.

The game was tied, so I assumed it would be a while before my local team got on the field, but just as I set up, Preston hit a grounder, but Wister bobbled the ball, allowing Preston to score, winning the game.

Before my eyes and in my viewfinder, I captured celebration and dejection through my 400mm. And, it turns out, I can still focus, fast and accurately, and this lens, a relic from 1985, was still “a sweet piece of glass.”