Mar 7, 2017

30-30-30 : Day 11 : Nikon F3

Setup for Day 11 (Feb 25th, 2017):









Camera: Nikon F3HP
Lens: Nikkor AI-S 50mm f/1.4
Film: Kodak TMX 100

Mini-review of the setup:

Camera: Hmm, what to say about the Nikon F3. Spec lists and reviews are everywhere else on the internet. This one was bought on eBay "as parts" and it indeed doesn't work in A mode but it does work fine in the manual speeds. Finder is nice and bright but somehow it's not wonderful like my short fling with an Olympus OM4T was, late last year (now gone to a good friend in San Diego who is taking very good care of it). That one had the ability to make you want to watch the world, the F3 simply makes you want to take the bloody shot and get on with it.

Winder feels pretty good, shutter release is fine but not magically smooth or precise and I'm just not falling in love with the thing as I'm using it. Shutter sounds like...a shutter.

After looking at the negs, this clearly has issues of some kind with the light leak. Oh well, it won't be missed.

Lens: The AI-S is a slight evolution of the earlier Nikkor I shot with the original F. Should be better coatings, otherwise very similar image quality. I used a Nikkor metal hood and a B+W polarizer for hopefully darker skies with decent cloud separation.

Again, good to very good but just not falling in love with it. Maybe it's just that the focus ring spins the "wrong" way compared to most of the gear I have/use more frequently. Out of all the adapted manual focus lenses that I have access to right now, I wouldn't choose this one to use on my DSLR.

Film: Most of the TMX 100 film that I've shot here has come from that thrift store lot but as I'm running out of that (finally, after years!), I have been winding some off of a bulk roll of significantly newer stock. This should result in less grain, more sharpness and better overall quality if I do my part in developing correctly.


After seeing scans: Poor scan quality due to haze inside the glass of the scanner. Negs are sharper than what you see here, but I'm not going to re-scan due to the fact that there are light leaks in almost all the frames. Shot around the house a bit, camera porn is easy to shoot.
































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