It was a beautiful day on Sunday so I grabbed Dee and her collection of ridiculously bright socks and headed out to shoot some film. I slapped the 28mm F/2.8 AI-S Nikkor on my Nikon FA body and, as there were some nice clouds, I added a polarising filter to enhance them against the blue sky.
Kodak Gold UC 100 ASA
For this second shot, I used some very expired Kodak tungsten-balanced film (EPY) and cross-processed in C41 chemistry.
Maternity Shoot
This is from a friend’s maternity shoot last week. I used a Nikon FA with 50mm F/1.2 lens with available light only. She was a great model and we managed to get some wonderful shots before the light went (curse those Spring storms)!
Used at or near it’s maximum aperture, the Nikon 50mm F/1.2 lens gives a lovely soft rendering to images that worked perfectly here.
Nikon FM2n with 105mm F/2.5 AI Nikkor lens
My newly acquired Nikon FM2n, shown with a 105mm F/2.5 AI Nikkor lens. The body shows some signs of it’s 25 years or so of use, but it performs beautifully. The light seals and mirror foam had disintegrated into a oily black mess, but after a good clean and some new seals it’s ready for another 30 years of picture taking!
Nikon FA
I bought a job lot of gear a few weeks ago, mainly for a Pentax 6×7 medium format outfit. Amongst the two truck loads of stuff (!), there were four Nikon bodies and a gaggle of lenses. I’ve been going through them all and renovating them one by one.
This late-eighties Nikon FA needed new light-seals, mirror bumper foam and a thorough strip-down cleaning. Looks and works great now though, and the test roll I ran though it on Saturday shows no faults!
The seventies saw a major fundamental change in camera design, heralded by the launch of the Olympus OM1 in 1972. Prior to this groundbreaking model, the majority of 35m SLRs were big and heavy, with lenses and accessories to match. In contrast, the OM1 was tiny, and within a few years all the other manufacturers were also designing their own compact SLR. Nikon’s answer to this trend was the FM.
Nikon FM with Nikkor 50mm F/1.8 AI lens
Nikon F2 Photomic
Launched by Nikon in 1971, the F2 replaced the original F model as the premier professional 35mm SLR camera of it’s time. Boasting many improvements over it’s popular predecessor, it was clear that Nikon had taken to heart the feedback on the F from the pros and had produced a tool that many people believe is the finest mechanical SLR ever built.
It was the mid-seventies when I started to become seriously interested in photography and the F2 was at the peak of it’s popularity. I had started to harbour a dream of becoming a press photographer by then, and would read any photography magazine I could get my hands on, and watch the news every night to catch a glimpse of the pros at work. In doing so, one thing became clear: if one wanted to be a professional photographer at that time, you simply had to use a Nikon F2!
It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of older lenses, for various reasons, not least of which is that they represent an excellent bargain compared to modern equivalents. Nikon lenses are very popular as they can be used on a wide range of bodies from various makers with the use of cheap and readily available adapters. One of my favourite older Nikon lenses is the Nikkor-S 50mm F/1.4.
Nikkor-S 50mm F/1.4 Non-AI Lens
Nikkor 105mm F/2.5 (AI and pre-AI versions, L to R)
Initially introduced in Nikon F mount in the mid fifties, and produced until at least the late nineties, the Nikkor 105mm F/2.5 rapidly earned itself an enviable reputation as one of the best short telephoto lenses ever made for the 35mm format, irrespective of brand. It’s focal length made it a natural choice for portraits and it is still an excellent lens for that purpose on either film or digital bodies.
One of my favourite images from the past few years, and also the shoot that marked my transition back to using film after six years of exclusively digital photography.
Jenn – Hasslelbad 500C/M with Carl Zeiss Planar lens
The location for this shoot was, of all places, the Hardee’s in Lenoir City. A strange choice if it wasn’t for the fact that a local car club was meeting there that evening and I’d already got permission to photograph in and around thier immaculately restored vehicles.
Launched in 1980, the Nikon F3 replaced the F2 as their top of the line professional camera body, and went from being the most controversial to one of the best selling film cameras in the history of the company.
Nikon F3HP with MD4 and 50mm F/1.2 Nikkor
Prior to the introduction of the F3, the Nikon pro bodies had always been fully mechanical, with no reliance on batteries except to power the meter (if you had one of the metering heads). The F3, however, used a brand new electronically controlled horizontal-traveling titanium shutter which, in contrast to previous models, required battery power to operate. This initially caused great consternation in the pro community, and the reluctance of many to switch to the new F3 was a real problem for Nikon. Many press photographers were unwilling to give up the reliabllity of thier mechanical F2s for this new, untested electronic camera.