Nikkor 35mm f2.8 – tim dobbs photography

This started off as a proper test as I had read in various places that you can shoot XP2 at different ISO ratings without changing the development times.

My plan was to load up my FE2 and over the space of a few days/weeks shoot the roll in different situations that required possible pushing/pulling and write down the setting to see what happens when I develop the roll eg. does it work??

The experiment went pretty good initially but about 20 frames into the roll I managed to lose my little notepad with my settings on which essentially ballsed up the whole thing as I do not have the settings to correspond to the images.

What I can say is that I shot the roll between 200-3200 iso … the shots in the bright sunshine were at the end of the roll after I realised I had lost my notepad so I think they were all 200-400 while the shot of my son on his phone was definitely at 1600 iso.

All in all after a little tweaking in Lightroom every frame I shot was perfectly useable with the higher ISO shots exhibiting quite a bit of grain but I like grain so to me that was an added bonus.

Well here is a selection of images … comments most welcome …

Please click a photo to view larger

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 🙂

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) 🙂