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.

All Along The Watchtower

Today I have taken out yet another camera from my "as is" eBay box.

A Nikon N2020. It was introduced in 1986 and is very much a product of it's time.

It's big. It's heavy. It's loud. It RUnS oN AAA BAtteRIeS! Which, for an SLR camera, is kind of a big deal for me. It is, I'm pretty sure, my only battery operated SLR camera.

Anyway, here is the camera:

 

 Here are the pictures from today:

 Note, there will be more pictures in a future post, this roll of film spans a few days.

Overall, I'm happy with the camera. I used my manual 50mm that came with the FT, and I think it was, overall, a good combination.  This is another camera that I'm looking forward to using.

Sweet Home Indiana

I started working through the box of the "as is" Nikon 35mms that I snagged last month.

I found that I really enjoyed using the N80, and I hope that it will go into semi-regular rotation in the future.  Admittedly, I'm more of a fan of semi-manual camera usage, but if I need to get some pictures taken the right way on film, I suspect that will become one of my go-to cameras for that.

Next up...The Nikon N70

 Much like theN80, it looks an awful lot like the D40x from the front.  The menu display on the top is a little wonky and took some getting used to.  I only used it in one of the auto modes, with the slightly broken 18-55 AI lens that I snagged for the D40x a while back, so that made my results fairly predictable.  After I use it a little more, I may throw a completely manual lens on it and see what it can do.

As for now, I went to a church and used a roll of film on a dreary December morning:

 Anyway, I will be using this one again as well.

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.

Waitin’ For The Train That Goes Home

 

I also decided to take my Minolta SRT-102 to the skate park this afternoon. Hilariously enough, some kid recognized that it was, at least, a Minolta.

Anyway, the SRT-102 went into production in ’73 and ended in’75. They come in chrome and black body styles. Mine is black. I used the Rokkor 58mm f=1.8 lens tha came with my SRT-101. Yes, the lens is somewhat banged up. I tripped over a child and the lens hit concrete.

The lens ended up with exactly no functional damage.

Anyway, here are some pictures. They are heavy on the green, but that is what happens when I just kind of wing it with the chemical temperatures during the developing of the film.

Again, this is a dreary November day in the mid-west. I’ll run another roll sometime in Spring or Summer and see what I end up with.