A few months back I picked up a Nikkormat FTn from an old photographer who was selling a few bits and pieces, I bought it without a lens as I have plenty of Nikon F mount lenses ( or so I thought ).
Once I got it home I mounted my 50mm f1.4 only to find that I couldn’t meter properly as the lenses that I had with an actual aperture ring didn’t have the little aperture lug thingy that is on the older Ai lenses which tells the camera meter what aperture was selected.
I did however find out that there is a way of using the stop down metering method which I tried and it worked fine but I wanted to get one of the older Ai lens just to use it properly.
So 2 weeks ago I was in Cardiff visiting the David Hurn “Swaps” exhibition in the National Museum of Wales and I paid a visit to a few of the little camera shops only to come across this Nikkor 35mm f2.8 Ai which was in excellent condition and just as importantly it was in my price range.
To test the combination I loaded up some ilford XP2 and went out into the wonderful welsh weather and shot away.
The lens was great to use, very smooth and I love the 35mm field of view so all was good.
I developed and scanned the film and here are the results.
I am very happy with how they both performed especially the lens which is sharp and contrasty given the condition that I was shooting in.
The camera shop that I purchased this lens also had 2 Nikon F3’s and a Nikkor 28mm Ai which I played with a bit but held my nerve and left them in the shop … until next time I am in Cardiff (I don’t have an F3 in my collection) 🙂
Anyway thanks for looking ….
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All images on my blog are available as prints just drop me an email
I also have a film only blog over at  usingfilm.wordpress.com if you want a peek 🙂
I only just realised while backing up my Lightroom catalogs that I had forgotten to post this blog which should have been posted before the Ektachrome 2 parter.
I have quite a few different slide stocks stored in my fridge and the day I shot this we had just had a huge downpour and I was not really sure whether or not the rain would come back so I loaded up some Sensia 400 rated at 320 iso into my Olympus OM10 for a change as I haven’t used this camera for years, I usually use either the OM2s or OM1n when I want to go down the Olympus route.
Lucky for me the rain held off for a while and the sun peaked out to give a nice warm look to the Sensia.
The first thing that was apparent was how much more Red the images were compared to the 120, both films were obviously expired the 120 was 2012 and this roll was 2009.
That said I don’t think it harmed the look of the images in fact I quite like the overall Red feel.
Overall I was very happy with both rolls and I am really looking forward to getting my hands on the new re-issued version as soon as it comes out.
As per last month here are all my photos taken for October’s “DeltaDefJam” challenge.
I tried to test the film/camera with a variety of settings and subjects from wide open closeups to stopped down wide shots all in aperture priority at iso 400 and developed the roll in Ilfotec HC 1+31 dilution for 8 minutes.
The film itself was also a revelation with lovely contrast and excellent sharpness which really showed in some of the images where I stopped down to f8 and more.
As I said earlier in the post … more about the Minolta Dynax 500si …
I have been thinking about how to give back to the film community in some way.
tim dobbs photography 