ben_hutcherson

An image can be good and compelling whether it's taken on a disposable camera, a Hasselbad 500, an iPhone, or(insert latest high end DSLR). At the end of the day, the results are what matter, and any of the above-as well as the in betweens-are capable of such in competent hands. Heck, I'd say the average person on the street is more capable of taking a compelling photography with an iPhone or a P&S/DSLR in "green box" mode than with a Hasselbad. I still use a lot of film, and have a pretty wide gamut of cameras. I have more 35mm SLRs than I care to count, a couple of LTM rangefinders(including a Leica), a couple of Rolleiflexes, two different 6x6 SLR systems, a Mamiya RB67 system, and a growing collection of 4x5 cameras and lenses. When I get the film cameras out, I tend to go into a different mindset and feel like I'm more likely to get a good result(plus I just enjoy the process, from loading the film to watching a print develop). I love dumping out a box of Velvia transparencies on the light table, or even better laying a 4x5 on it. That's me, though. When I'm looking at a compelling photo, the medium used to produce it is not what's on my mind.

The F3 sort of does, as it will "lock" into the A or X positions if you turn it there. That just annoys me even more, though, since you have to push the button in the center to unlock the dial. The F and F2 don't have stops either, although the metered finders DO have stops.

Were you planning on having the film developed at a lab? If so, I'd take the whole camera to them, explain what happened, and see if they'll take care of it. I imagine any lab that does B&W these days would be more than competent to handle it. If you DO develop yourself, you already have all of the skills and facilities you need to salvage it. Go into whatever dark place you load your developing reels with the camera. Lay the camera front down and open the back a full 180º. That will get the quick load plate out of the way. Then hit the rewind button on the camera, which will allow the take up spool to turn freely. Turn it until you find the end of the film, then grab that and you can just pull the film out of the camera.

I primarily use E-6 for color, and most of the time Velvia 50 is my film of choice. I'm fortunate to have a local lab that does 35mm and 120 for a reasonable price and they usually get them done either the same day or the next day. With that said, I always encourage them to hold off until they have enough volume to make it worthwhile. With that said, since I started shooting large format I've started developing E6 myself. I use the Arista 3-bath kit, and it's not terribly expensive or difficult to use. I use the bathtub to keep the temperature constant. I, of course, do all of my own 4x5 and most of my own 120. I still let the local lab do 35mm as I like to have it cut and mounted and I'm not set up to do that. Plus, I like to keep them in business.

I've been a dyed-in-the-wool 6x6 shooter for years, but I've just recently dipped my toes into the 6x7 waters with the RB system. Most all of my work in all formats is in 3 ring binders in Print File archival pages. For the time being, the MF pages I've using hold four strips of film, which of course is 4 strips of 3 6x6s. I've also used the 3 strip pages which I prefer-I just got a good deal on the 4-strip ones :) A little number crunching leaves me with a bit of a problem on 6x7s, though. 10 frames won't divide evenly into three or four, so the only easy solution I see is to spread one roll out over two pages. Does anyone have any alternate suggestions on how they handle 6x7s? I know this is a pretty trivial thing, but at the same time I like having at least a sort of logical catalog system so that I can locate a transparency/negative without TOO much hunting.

Thanks for the endorsement of the camera. As I said, in all honesty I AM a Canon guy. I still love shooting film, but there are times when digital is necessary/proper/just the best choice. My Rebel is a tool, and while it serves my needs well enough it does come up lacking in several areas. To be fair, I only used the kit lens on it for a while. I bought the fantastic 100mm 2.8 Macro(non-IS) about a year ago and that lens made me realize that man of the deficiencies I thought I was seeing were in the lens more so than the camera. Even so, I'd still like to expand my digital kit, and the Df seems like the perfect camera for someone like me who wants to pack film cameras-and especially good manual cameras-along side a digital body. I also like knobs and switches-part of the reason why I really like the F4. I realize it's probably not a camera for everyone, but I'm glad to know that folks who are attracted to it for the same reason as I am find that it suits them. The "backwardness" of Nikons is still throwing me off, but at the same time I've been making myself use them. Preparations are in full swing to dress our state Capitol up for the Derby, and I spent about an hour walking around the grounds this afternoon with my F3 around my neck and swapping between a 28mm 2.8 and 55mm Micro as appropriate. I burned through a roll and a half of Velvia, and I have to admit that I'm warming up to it even if I'm constantly turning the shutter speed dial or aperture ring the wrong direction. I still have to get use to the fact that Nikon lets the shutter speed dial turn completely around(I've used F-1s and related bodies a lot, and one of the things that I've always taken for granted is that I can set shutter speeds without looking at anything based on the hard stops at both extremes of the dial).

Thanks guys. I am a watchmaker so am not afraid of delicate work, but at the same time I don't know these well enough to feel good about tackling them. I'll check with John White. As I mentioned, the 20mm is my main interest now. Matthew, I think you're right with the exception of the Series E. My 50mm doesn't even have the positioning holes, although it now has a hole where I attempted to mount a form from a Vivitar lens. My F doesn't even do TTL metering-with an uncoupled lens you slide the pin back and forth and then when you've centered the needle you read the correct aperture out of a window in the back of the finder. As another interesting point, this particular finder(the original Photomic finder) also doesn't require you to twiddle the ring to "teach" it the maximum aperture-it just reads it correctly. I've been told it can get away with it because it's not a TTL meter. As for the Df, I've read good and not-so-good things about the body, but AFAIK it's the only digital body made with a "flip up" AI fork so it can both safely mount non-AI lenses and meter correctly with non-chipped AI lenses.

I've recently gotten in to buying/collecting some earlier Nikon pieces. Even though I was am still am a Canon nut, the F-series bodies fascinate me and I've enjoyed learning about and using some of the great old glass. With that said, I've of course run into plenty of non-AI lenses. For most of them(including a couple of different 50mms) I also have a companion AI lens, so that's not a problem. I also generally try to buy earlier AI lenses with the fork so that I can use them both on AI and non-AI bodies. I have a couple of lenses, though, where I don't have an AI counterpart. One of the problems I've run into is with "standard" 50mm lenses. I have a bunch of them. The Micros are no problem, as I have both a non-AI along with an early "forked" AI lens. I have two 50mm 1.8s-one a Series E, and the other the first generation AF version. Neither of these have forks, although if I were so inclined I think that could be fixed on the AF lens. My only 1.4 is non-AI, although I'd honestly rather just get an AI version since that's not a super expensive lens in any trim. All of my bodies I currently own allow me to use non-AI lenses, and I've actually been reading up on and considering a Df since it ca be used with non-AIs. All of that aside, though, I have a very nice 20mm f/3.5 non-AI. It's the early one with the "big" front element. I'd actually really like to do a proper AI conversion on it-I've run across folks who will mill the aperture ring, but of course I also don't want to lose the fork and also am not wild about the labels that are used. If I did convert it, I'd like to do it right with the replacement aperture ring, but I can't seem to find one. Does anyone know if these are available anywhere? Second, I'm also attracted to the fact that there are a lot of new lenses out there that I can still use on my F and F2. The ones I've looked at still have the pilot holes on the aperture ring for the coupling fork. Is this a service that Nikon still offers, or do I need to find a 3rd party to do it? Obviously, I'd prefer Nikon do it since I'd hate to blow $1K on a new lens and then void the warranty by having 3rd party work on it. I realize this is an obscure question(I'm guessing folks buying new lenses for an F2 or the like probably use an F2A or F2AS that doesn't require the fork) and that aperture rings are basically an endangered species on new lenses. Even so, the less compatibility(even though it's full of astericks and exceptions) is a big attraction to me with the F mount.

I've been experiencing a problem over the last two or three days that virtually makes the site unuseable for me. Whenever I load a page(forum list, specific forum, or thread), it will continually refresh and scroll up and down while doing so unless I hit X to stop it doing this. Firefox 52.0.2, OS X Sierra 10.12.4

I admit that I've only been back posting on this site after a long hiatus, but it seems to me like you never miss a chance to crap on it as a medium when given the chance. Back when I was a moderator, we frowned on this and that was when film-v-digital wars were in full swing. Some of us just enjoy the process of shooting film, and I don't see any reason to get on a pedestal and tell us we're wasting our time every chance given.

I went for a long time without a dedicated drying tool. A couple of months ago, I was placing a big order with Freestyle and thought I'd toss in a squeegee with it. I bought their house branded one. In any case, I've found that whatever I do it usually still scratches the ever loving crap out of my film. I've cleaned and washed it and have examined it under a loupe-I can't find any obvious problems. Looking at negatives where I've had issues, often the scratches only start part of the way down the film making me think it picks up grit from the film. BTW, my set-up is a bit low tech since I have to break down my film "darkroom"(the only dark part is the changing bag) when I'm finished. It's a long story and not worth getting into, but printing darkroom is physically separate(I need to shift over to developing film in my printing room, but right now it's impractical). In any case, I say all that to mention how I physically dry roll films. Basically, I hang a coat hanger from the shower curtain rod, clip one end of the film into that, and then use a binder clip on the other end to weight it down. I gave up on it and went back to using the finger squeegee on sheet film.

One of my favorite photos I've taken was on top of Montmartre in Paris at about 10:00 at night. Truth be told, I have no idea what the shutter speed was, but it was long. I set my Canon A-1 to aperture priority, set the 50mm lens to infinity and stopped it down a bit to get a little more depth of field. I then set the 2 second self timer on the camera, leaned my back against a wall, let the camera dangle from my the strap, an held my breath until I heard the shutter click closed. That camera will time shutter speeds out to 30 seconds-I'd guess this exposure was 15 or 20. I was surprised that it turned out as nice as it did.

I should have been more careful in my wording. My 135mm comment was about 35mm film-i.e. almost 3x the "normal" focal length rule. Surprisingly enough, I find that I can often get at least decent results in MF using the reciprocal focal length rule or even slower as the camera is hanging from a strap and braced against my chest. I don't "do" prisms in MF in general even though I have at least one prism for both of my SLR systems(although I will use a 45º on a tripod sometimes for macro work as a matter of convenience) so I'm virtually always using the WLF. I have negatives that were taken hand held at 1/30th on a Rolleiflex that are acceptable at 8x10, although they do show some blur if you look close enough. I won't try that with a medium format SLR. My SQa isn't terrible, but I can feel the vibration from the S2a. On those, I consider 1/250th a bare minimum. The S2A will go to 1/1000, but the curtains move slow enough(flash sync is 1/30) that I can even see some strange artifacts from motion blur on it. Of course, it's also not as bad as my Speed Graphic, and doesn't induce things like the infamous oval wheels :) . In general, I only use the FP shutter in it for barrel lenses or the couple of lenses I've been given with dead leaf shutters.

FWIW, I only use DI for the final steps that touch the film and use tap for everything else. At work, I'm one of those guys who has the faucet that Glen H mentions. In fact, I have a second one that comes right out the back end of resin bed tanks and will fill a 1 gallon bottle or 4L flask in a few seconds. I can't be TOO generous with our DI water as we're pinching pennies everywhere, but at the same time the stuff costs us pennies a gallon. I think we pay Culligan around $125 to change the resin beds, and I seem to recall our regular service man saying that they were good for about 1000 gallons in this area. The only thing I really have to be stingy about is the ultra pure(18MΩ/cm) as the resins don't have anything close to the life of our "big" DI systems and are also quite expensive. We have a go/no go light on the "house" system that goes out when conductivity goes above 1MΩ/cm. There's very little need for ultra pure water(you know if you need it-mostly if you're doing electrochemistry, HPLC, or CE), so there's no reason for us to have huge generation capacity. Our regular DI system is a continuous loop about 2 miles long through the building all plumbed in Tygon. The ultrapure systems use a mixture of HDPE and PTFE.

That looks like OOF to me and not motion blur. With that said, it's interesting to me that NOTHING in the photos is in focus. If the RF were somewhat off, I'd expect to see SOMETHING in focus-especially in the photo of the hallway where there's a lot behind the subjects, or in some of your others where there's a decent amount in front. When I say nothing is in focus, it looks like there's nothing even close. Were it my camera, I'd be inclined to lock the shutter open(not sure if you have a bulb setting or not on that camera-I'm not overly familiar with it) and put a piece ground glass over the film plane. I'd then look at the GG and see if I could bring anything into focus on it. I'd also do a couple of checks on it. For one thing, I'd go outside and pick an object you can see clearly that should be far enough away for it to be at infinity. A couple of hundred feet should work for a 50mm(or 47mm) lens on a 35mm camera. Look through the rangefinder and see if it indicates correct focus for that distance. If it doesn't, your rangefinder is definitely off. Also, if you can, repeat the ground glass test and see if the image is in focus. Second, I'd be tempted to burn another roll of film and try zone focusing it. Don't rely on the rangefinder, but instead eyeball the distances and set those on the lens focusing ring. I'm not sure if the camera gives you the option to set the aperture, but if it does stop it down some. If not, go outside on a sunny day, set the shutter speed to 1/125 or 1/250, and you should get a decently small aperture. If you want to get picky, you could even get out a tape measure, measure your distances, and see if the RF agrees with them. If it doesn't, I'd still go with the marked setting on the lens over the RF.

I wouldn't be overly concerned about 15V on an A series camera. The old Vivitars with 200+V are different story. The T series might be a bit more iffy. As for the bulging bulb-I've never seen that happen aside from sometimes the lacquer covering bubbling up a bit. Most bulbs(although admittedly not the GE #5s in my desk drawer) have a dot of cobalt chloride in the envelope. If it's blue, the bulb should be safe. If it's pink, toss the bulb. Sylvania always advertised this as a prominent feature of their "Blue Dot" bulbs. As far as disposal goes, there's nothing harmful in the things. Just don't spit a bulb that has just been fired right out of the camera into a plastic trashcan or plastic trash bag. If I'm going to be using a more than a couple of bulbs, I usually keep an old metal coffee can or similar nearby and pop the bulbs out of the camera into that. By the time I've finished, they're usually cool enough to handle. BTW, after I set off the fire alarm burning magnesium ribbon in one of the lecture halls I use, I've switched to using flash bulbs to demonstrate that reaction :) . It may not be AS dramatic as the ribbon, but at least it still shows magnesium burning in oxygen. I actually picked up a couple of packs of Fuji FP100C recently, so I'm going to be using my Polaroid 250 the next couple of times I do that demo. I just wish someone still made 4x5 instant film, as the Speed Graphic always gets a wow. 1/30 is usually a safe speed with a #5 or M3 type bulb for a focal plane shutter without M sync. You could PROBABLY safely do 1/60 or even 1/125 on a T90, but that's something that you need to experiment with. With a focal plane type bulb(GE #6 comes to mind) you can usually go above the flash sync speed as these bulbs are designed for a longer duration full power burn. I have the dedicated flash unit for my Canon IVSb and the shutter speed/bulb type combos listed in the manual can make your head spin. One last thing for the OP-if you're going to use these, don't stick bare, unfired bulbs in your pocket. Static can set them off, and bulbs that are touching each other will also light.

On the F2, the intermediate collar position is "normal" while one is for time exposures and one locks the button. On the F, you use the collar to switch between advance and rewind-it functions a lot like the little lever on screwmount Leicas and the like. I think that on this one, the shutter may actually have been capping rather than firing at any certain designated speed. I don't know the specifics, but a lot of mechanical shutters are infinitely variable over certain ranges. On the older Rolleiflexes with Compur-Rapids, for example, the speeds between(I think) 1/30 and 1/250 are that way. 1/500 engages a "boost" spring so there's in-between on those. I'm pretty sure F and F2 shutters are infinitely variable also at least down to the flash sync speed.

That looks to me like dried hard water residue. The proof would be on the negatives-if you can see spots that look like dried water drops(i.e. like what you might see on a car windshield) that's your problem. Are you using a rinse agent at the proper dilution? If not, start using one(btw, having the rinse agent too concentrated can cause issues also-I've found Photoflo at 1:200 to be too much). If you are using a rinse agent at a proper dilution, consider switching to distilled/deionized water for your final rinse.

I honestly don't waste my time on them in 35mm, but I find them very useful in MF and 4x5. They're big enough that I can pretty easily evaluate without a loupe whether or not something is worth printing or scanning.

FWIW, I'm not nuts about the MF holders for the V700/750/800/850. The 35mm and 4x5 holders are fine(although I use a Nikon Coolscan for 35mm primarily) but I find the MF holders difficult to load and the film support to be a bit lacking. It can be a wrestling match if your film has any curl to it at all. My old Canoscan 2400f, which is a cheap scanner, had a much better MF holder in my opinion. If had two small clips to hold the film, slightly wider supports(that didn't intrude into the film area) and came with a stiff plastic card to support the frames not being scanned. Don't get me wrong-my V700 does a great job, but if I want to get the most out of a negative that's not perfectly flat, I usually end up wet scanning it. It's easy enough to adapt the V700 for wet scanning, but the process itself has a fairly steep learning curve and I still often have to try mounting a couple of times to get everything completely bubble free. BTW, I have been a 6x6 shooter for as long as I've been into medium format(about 10 years now). I have a lot of photos that just work well as squares, and also a lot of cropped ones. I started with a Rolleicord Va, bought an early Rolleiflex soon after, and spent a LONG time using either or both of those cameras as my main MF cameras. The 'Cords and 3.5 'flexes are fairly small and light, and I find them quite comfortable to use. I had wanted an SLR for a long time, and finally bought a Bronica SQ-a few years ago. While I could have spend maybe $200 more for a basic Hasselbad system, the draw to the Bronica to me is that lenses and accessories like film backs are significantly less expensive for the Bronica than the 500 series cameras. The Bronica lenses are excellent. Not too long ago, I picked up another Bronica system with an S2a and a C body along with 5 lenses(two 75mms, a 50, 135, and 150). This system is totally incompatible with the SQ system. It also is functionally quite different-it has an instant return mirror that goes down(not up) so the lenses can extend quite deeply into the body and uses focal plane shutters. The focusing helical is separate from the lenses(although it can be removed), which has the advantage of making the lenses relatively light. I've been cautioned to treat them carefully as they've been described to me as a "mechanical nightmare" but the Nikkor optics are superb. I'm also probably going to be taking advantage of low prices and picking up an RB67 soon. I do have to say that one camera which has been intriguing recently is the Fuji GS645. This is something of a modern take on the folding rangefinder. I like it because it's a small non-intimidating camera that I suspect would pass as a 10 year old digital P&S at venues that don't allow "professional" cameras. It's also pocketable.

It might be time to cut down on the coffee :) In all seriousness, I can easily get sharp images at 1/125 using a normal equivalent lens. If I step up to 135mm or so, I will probably shoot for 1/250 as a minimum with a higher speed if I can. I pull the tripod tripod out where possible for longer lenses(often even 200mm in 35mm). Even with a medium format SLR, I can usually get acceptably sharp photos at 1/125(although I'll go faster if I can) with a 75mm/80mm(normal lens) and many of them can cause a small earthquake when the mirror flips up. Heck, I have handheld 4x5s that were taken at 1/125th and while they do show SOME motion blur it's not catastrophic.

Gary, Thanks-I'll give that try the next time I'm out. At least I don't have to trim the leader like I do with my Canon IVSb(and any other bottom-loading rangefinder).

Definitely. I touched on this above, but unless you have a good reason to do otherwise this is where I'd suggest leaving the ASA dial on the F4 parked Of course, there are non-DX coded films on the market. Mine has Scala 160 in it now, which isn't. Efke films also weren't, but unless you have old stock you won't run into those.

The long exposure back I'm talking about is for the Canon F-1, not the Nikon F. As I understood, the bulk backs were for use at the Olympics. Canon was really trying to capture the market in the late 70s and into the 80s, and made a lot of special configuration cameras. There was another F-1(I think a New F-1, but could be wrong) with a pellicle mirror that could manage 14fps. The 250 back at least can only be used with a motor not be manually advanced. I think the 100 frame back is the same. If I'm not mistaken, Kodak kept Super XX around for a really long time in sheet film-I could be wrong, but I don't think they axed the sheet film until the early '90s. I've been tempted to try some of the movie stocks-I hear great things about them and short ends are certainly economical. Going back to the Nikon F-it's "quirky" enough that I often find myself getting confused by it, although I don't use mine all that much. When I bought mine(with the original external CdS Photomic), I bought from a camera shop for not a whole lot more than the value of the lens because the shutter timings were seemingly totally shot. When I got it home, I noticed that the collar around the shutter button was halfway between the two marks. Once I flipped it fully over to "A", the times were as good as you could ask for a 50+ year old camera. Still, though, every time I use it the back really throws me off and I find myself looking for a place to set it down :) . At least it's not as bad as MF dark slides-I seem to never find a place to put those unless I have a shirt pocket.

Speaking of 100 ft rolls, from my perspective Kodak has seemingly priced those out of consideration for me. I have a couple of Tri-X in the freezer and a roll of TMAX-100 that's been in a loader for probably too long, but aside from the fact that the boxed rolls take up less space I don't see a lot of point in them. When you factor in the film lost both at the beginning and end of a roll, you can actually end up paying more than buying loose rolls. If I ever pick up one of the Kodak 100 frame or 250 frame backs(a local shop has an F-1 with the 250 that the owner likes to show off when I'm in) I might be tempted to break them out. Even at that, though, I have no idea how I'd process it....short ends of movie stock and a lab willing to process 250 frame rolls seem a lot more viable to me these days for those backs.