Everything Under The Sun Is In Tune, But The Sun Is Eclipsed By The Moon

 Managed to take some pictures of the eclipse today and not ruin my camera.

Winning!

Imperial March

[location | home]

[have you had a violent moodswing today | accomplished]

[the sounds of | Walk This Way ~ Aerosmith]

Today I went to the Children’s Museum to, among other things, take some photos.

Of the several cameras I took, my chrome (?) and black Nikon Nikkormat FTn was the most fun to use.

Given that the lighting inside the museum is hot garbage, I stuck with the Nikkor-H 28mm lens. The max aperture of f 3.5 doesn’t make it anywhere close to the fastest lens that I have for a Nikon, but for what I needed it for, it worked.

I also slapped a cheap Targus flash unit on the thing, but since the camera does not have a hot shoe, I snagged a cheap adapter from Amazon that mounts to the cold shoe and has a plug-in for the built-in sync ports.

Anyway, the camera:

I absolutely love the way the camera looks. I don’t think I’ve seen a bad looking Nikon SLR from the late ’60s, but given this one or the near-identical black one that I have, I’ll take this one any day.

Anyway, here are three photos from the Children’s Museum that I took with this camera:

It has a built in light meter. It doesn’t work well with an external flash unit, so I had to sort of wing it with the Indiana Jones picture, but I feel like the lighting managed to capture the mood of the exhibit perfectly.

This setup has been my go-to for manual 35mm for a few months now, and I expect this trend to continue.

It’s A Wonder I Can Think At All

[location | home]

[have you had a violent moodswing today | accomplished]

[the sounds of | Hollywood Nights ~ Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band]

 

A while back I snagged a lot of “As-is” Nikon SLR cameras on eBay. There were six in all and based on the pictures three of them were actually intact, so I figured at least one would work.

Two of those SLRs were a Nikon N70 and A Nikon N80.

I put batteries in both and they both powered on. The N70, however had a flashing error message on the screen and, allegedly, a steep learning curve.

With that in mind, I went with the Nikon N80 It is compatible with the automatic lenses that I own for the D40X and D3100, so I decided to start with that one.

I went out with my slightly broken 18-55mm lens and over two days shot a very nice roll of film.

Here are some samples from yesterday:

Here are some from today:

The weather was a little better today, but you can only do so well on a dreary mid-west December day.

Also, I’m happy with the developing, which I started doing myself in the kitchen last month.

I plan to give the N70 a spin fairly soon, if I can get the error message to go away. I’ve read that it is a fairly odd ball camera. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to that one.

Mamma Don’t Take My Kodachrome

Among all of the cameras that I own, my absolute favorite is a Nikon Nikkormat FS.  I picked it up at Goodwill for $10 because it had an awesome lens on it.  It may have been my first Nikon, I’m a little fuzzy on that point.
Anyway, I bought the thing in the spring or summer of 2011, and used it pretty frequently.  It was, for a long time, the backup for the Minolta SRT-101 that I already owned.  It had a longer lens, and was completely mechanical, so it was a lot more reliable than my Olympus OM-10 that I picked up at a flea market.
I learned so much with those three cameras that summer!
Anyway, when I got it the thing had a light leak due to a rotted out seal. Said light leak is apparent in some of the photos on the linked page.  They are the ones with the bar of overexposure down the right side of the photos.
I cut a piece of weatherstripping off the door of the non-functioning Party Van at work, dug out the rotted out seal and glued the new rubber in it’s place…Problem solved!
Anyway, I never really posted any pictures of the actual camera, so here it is:

I really should take this thing to Robert’s and see if they can clean it out and get it calibrated to the point of like new again.
(From the Wikipedia) The Nikkormat FS, manufactured from 1965 to 1971, was an FT stripped of the built-in light meter with its exposure information system and the mirror lockup feature. The FS was unpopular when new because of the lack of a built-in meter, but this makes it rarer and more valuable than the FTs to collectors today.

Because I’m Back In Black