ben_hutcherson

Selling my Super Ikonta. This one has served me well, but I never use it so figured it was time to pass it on. This is a 6x6 format folding rangefinder, and one of the most desireable of the Super Ikonta range. This one has an 80mm f/2.8 Zeiss Opton Tessar with T single coating on a Compur-Rapid shutter. The lens is in good shape, with good coating and no haze, fungus, or other issues. The rangefinder has decent contrast and is accurate. The biggest issue is that there is a loose metal disk-not sure what it is or where it came from-that rolls around and occasionally obscures the viewfinder. A small shake will move it out of the way. Camera pops open smartly when the button is pressed. The bellows are light tight. The leather has a few rubs, but overall the camera presents extremely well both open and closed with bright/clean metalwork and smooth operation. I have shot a half dozen rolls in this camera and it hasn't missed a beat. $230 inc. shipping in the US. At this time, I am not willing to ship internationally.

Speaking from the inside out-first of all the larger an org is, typically the more is has to go through to get paid. In a previous position at a large university(maybe even worse as far as red tape to get something like this done) I often used small "one man shop" or only slightly larger vendors/service providers. I wanted to keep those folks happy, and would arm twist however much I needed to in order to get them paid. Sometimes it didn't speed things up, but it would work(BTW, for us, if the bill was under $5K and you could take a credit card, I could take care of it myself, but there again policies differ all over the place. Right now, I'm dealing with one of my own-not photography-that's outstanding for about $1200. They managed to lose my invoice, I resent it, never got an answer on when it would be processed, and my inquiry yesterday lead to a slew of "We are closed until January 13th" messages. I've done business with them many times, and have one specific contact person. That guy, and his boss, want to keep me happy(we've worked together for a while, and they know I'll do anything in my power to take care of them) and I can feel the frustration from him when an invoice from me gets caught up in red tape.

Used 64gb Sony class G XQD card. This one has been my main card in my now gone D500. I didn't use that camera ton, but the card worked fine. No box, but always kept in a card wallet when not in the camera and perfect cosmetically. $70 shipped US. No international at this time-sorry. Sony combined USB 3.0 XQD/SD UHS-II reader. This is the older generation, this style Sony XQD/SD Card Reader $55 shipped CONUS, again no international at this time. Buy both for $120 shipped.

Great! PM me and we can work out details.

Selling a very, very lightly used 120gb Sony XQD memory card. I'm actually not sure if I've ever used this other than to test it on initial receipt. If I have used it, it's only been a couple of times(I really don't have any need for cards this big). I don't have any packaging, but the card is perfect cosmetically. It's spent its entire life riding in my card wallet. This is a class G card. $100 shipped in the US. US only sales.

I've been happy with the 10-20mm, albeit I rarely actually use it on DX cameras. For some of the situations where I've used it, I've actually found VR useful. The biggest benefit has been when I'm photographing from a moving/bouncing platform. I love how lightweight it is, though.

I've been in the situation before where I thought I was being "friendly" and "easy to work with" when I went over and above what was agreed to on a service. To an extent it's not a bad thing, but at the same time if you set that expectation early on it's hard to break away from it. In fact I had to "fire" one of my first customers(non-photography related sideline business) not too long ago because I made the mistake of letting them push early on and dealing with them became unstainable for what they asked vs. what I charged them.

One of the mistakes I think a lot of people entering a business-whether full time or as a way to supplement their hobby/make money is drastically underselling themselves. No matter what your level, run your business like a business. In this case, deposits and/or cancellation fees are a pretty standard practice. After all, even if this is part time gig for you, you still blocked out time on a Saturday morning. What you would have used that time for-whether you turned down another paid job or were going to sleep in and spend the rest of the morning laying on your couch watching TV, you still planned a morning around it. Being too flexible early on can set you up to being taken advantage of in the future.

Very nice! I've sold off a lot of my Canon FD stuff, but I've kept one of my F-1s. I primarily use F2s now(which were the direct competitor) and there's a whole lot to like about the F2, but the F-1 is special in its own way and in some ways I feel a bit more "refined" than the F2. BTW, it's interesting to me to see how Canon and Nikon diverged on the New F-1 and the F3. Even though I'm now primarily a Nikon shooter, I've never really taken to the F3. Still, though, I think it's interesting to compare the film advance. The F2 is smooth, but not like the F-1. The New F-1 dropped a lot of the fine finishing, and the film advance certainly feels solid but not particularly smooth. The F3, on the other hand, one ups the F2 and the original F-1 with a film advance that's often considered among the best if not the best made.

Is the SB-400 iTTL only? Doesn't make a huge difference since the F6 can do both standard TTL and iTTL. In any case, don't have my F6 handy to see exactly what to do, but if you stick the flash on the camera you should be able to set flash mode in one of the custom function menus. I'll look when I get home to be sure. Beyond that, for balanced fill I'd probably set the flash exposure compensation to -1. If you hold the flash button(lightning bolt) under the back panel, you should be able to set this with one of the command dials.

One thing LF can really make you do is do your best to make every exposure count. A pocket/pouch on a bag can hold easily hold a couple hundred frames worth of 35mm or 100+ frames of 120(even shooting 6x7). I don't think I've ever gone out with more than 5 4x5 film holders(10 frames) and that's an unusually high number for me. Usually it's 2 or 3 holders, and I might only shoot one of them. Of course, that's part of the beauty of it too. I know with 35mm especially, I've been known to shove some crap onto the end of a roll just so I could finish it and develop it. That's less of a problem with 10 or 12 exposures in 120. If I go out with 4x5 and only shoot one frame, no problem, I just strip that sheet out of the holder and develop it.

The F100 is about 95% of the camera the F6 is for about 10% of the(used) F6 price. I love my F6, and in fact was just using it today. There's a heck of a lot to like about it, and there may be one feature that's a deal-maker vs. the F100 or a whole bunch of "nice to have" or a whole bunch of "who cares" features depending on your photography and/or lenses. Offhand, vs. an F100 What I care about: 1. Standard integrated data back with between-frame data printing(the F100 only does date) 2. Plain-text custom function and set-up menus, no cheater cards needed 3. Matrix metering with non-CPU lenses The nice but not a big deal features: 1. Ability to manually rewind. I usually use this to squeeze a bit more life out of the CR123As, although I'm still on the first set I put in mine when I got it maybe a year and a half ago. 2. Super quiet shutter and film advance. Neutral: 1. AF system is more advanced than any other Nikon film camera. The F5 and F100 had the same CAM 1300 5-point AF system. The F6 uses the CAM 2000 11 point system from the D2H/D2X. This is a mixed bag-on one hand the extra AF points aren't overly useful especially since they're designed for a DX frame, so you just have more points clustered over only a slightly larger area than the 5 point system in the F100. On the other hand, 9 AF points in the F6 are cross-type, while I think only the center is cross type in the F5/F100. This may be my imagination, but although the F6 doesn't necessarily rack screwdriver lenses like an F5(if you've used one, or a D1 series, you know what I'm talking about) the AF does seem more decisive and hunt a bit less than the older systems. I find that it will lock with a bit less contrast(on the F100 I'm often looking for an obvious line or something else, while the F6 is a bit less picky). 2. Gripped, the high speed performance is equal to the F5 at 8fps. Without a grip, it runs at 5.5fps. I don't care about frame rates on a film camera-in 2020 I'm struggling to come up with a situation where digital isn't the better tool if you need those kind of speeds. 3. i-TTL flash. This will stretch compatibility forward with newer flash units than plain old TTL, but I find that plain film TTL or even just plain old auto thyristor type flash works just as well. These days, most of my flash work is with studio lights, so in-camera flash metering is useless to me anyway. Still, though, some folks love i-TTL, and I THINK(don't hold me to this-I haven't experimented) you can use the F6 with Nikon's wireless system. I wouldn't trade my F6 for anything now that I have it, but after owning one after using an F100 a fair bit, I can also pretty safely say you're not missing a whole lot.

Yep-in particular it lacks the tungsten wire across the prism that nearly everyone breaks the first time they take apart an AE-1 :)

I have two FAs. The first I bought on Ebay, and I'm a bit wary of it. The first roll I shot in it was a roll of Provia, and it randomly blacked out about 5 frames. There was no rhyme or reason to it-some of them were two in a row in the middle of a sequence, while there'd be a 15 frame stretch where it was fine. Less #1 that I learned a long time ago but was anxious to play with the meter-test new cameras with expired B&W... I've since shot a few rolls of Tri-X in it and even braved a roll of Velvia, and it was fine but I'm still a bit gun shy around it. The second was bought from a trusted member here with a guarantee. The roll he loaded before shipping came out fine, as did the one I shot after it. I'm going to try this one with slide film since it's marked itself as trustworthy. At the end of the day, though, I like the FM2n and F2SB/F2AS better, and with a bit of thought I can expose as well the meter can. Truth be told, I probably get better exposure by thinking rather than blindly trusting the Matrix. Even the billion and a half segment matrix meters on my DSLRs still get fooled by the same sorts of things that trip up averaging meters-bright backlighting and the like-they just get fooled less. Truth be told, I doubt that having that many segments(I think 1005 is where current Nikon meters are) makes a huge difference vs. the 5 segments of the FA, aside from possibly some better logic backing them up.

I don't dispute that correction is always needed, however my point is that normally even in 6x7 we wouldn't worry about it at less-than-macro distances. In 4x5, filling the frame with a person's head may work out to something in the range of 1/3 life size, where exposure compensation is most certainly needed. For the same framing in a smaller format, we would be working with a much lower magnification ratio and in MF the compensation would be small if needed at all. In 35mm, it would be insignificant.

Large format is simultaneously frustrating and rewarding. The cameras tend to be big-even in 4x5-and can be intimidating. EVERYTHING on them is manually operated, and there are no interlocks to keep you from messing things up. Fogging, double exposures, and blank exposures are incredibly easy if you don't mind your Ps and Qs. Add to the fact that the "stakes" are very high for every frame. Even inexpensive B&W film runs over 50¢ a sheet, and if you get into shooting transparency film you can easily run $5/sheet plus about that much to process it. LF cameras, in general, are very flexible both literally and figuratively. Monorails typically have tilt, swing, rise, fall and shift on both the front and rear standards. Other types of cameras will have fewer movements-i.e. on a Speed/Crown Graphic you have a small amount of front rise and fall(more rise than fall, and fall takes some interesting contortions), some front tilt, and a small amount of front shift. Technical cameras like the Linhof have a few more movements, and field cameras tend to have even more. Exposure is the same, with the caveat that you REALLY have to start paying attention to light fall-off at closer focus distances. The larger the format, the more of an issue this is. At full-frame-headshot distances, you'll need some exposure compensation. The film handling is a set of skills unlike anything you've ever encountered in photography. You need to load your film holders in the dark, which is easy with a bit of practice, but still not a "natural" skill. Dark slide handling is a big deal, and of course keeping straight your exposed and unexposed film. When mastered, the results are second to none, and make it all worthwhile.

A few other things: Both companies came to the market with an AE camera around the same time. From early on, Nikon preferred aperture priority-in fact I'd go so far as to say that before 1981 Nikon lenses did not work in a way that was adaptable to shutter priority. The only "shutter priority" option from Nikon prior to the FA was the the bulky servo systems for the F2s, which would move the aperture ring back and forth until the meter prism indicated correct exposure-this was slow and bulky enough that it was meant more for unattended stationary operation than on-the-go photography. In any case, Canon had an easier time implementing shutter priority. The FD mount from the beginning had a linear aperture actuator, which works equally well for both shutter priority and aperture priority. Nikon released the Nikkormat EL, wihch is aperture priority, in 1972, and Canon followed with the shutter priority EF in 1973. Both are absolute tanks of cameras. The EF is based on the basic FTb body, while the EL is on the same basic Nikkormat body that had been in production. Nikon updated the EL to the EL2 to work with AI lenses. The AE-1 and FE really are kind of the better pairing, although I think that in every way other than cost it's hard not to say that the FE is the better camera. The FE body was smaller and lighter than the EL/EL2, but was still built to "semi-pro" standards(as such a category can exist) and not the thoroughly consumer grade AE-1. The AE-1 has a horizontal silk shutter with a 1/60 flash sync speed, while the FE has a vertical Copal Square type shutter with a 1/125 second sync speed. It's worth noting that the basic body design used for the FE(and its manual exposure cousin the FM) carried on in derivatives quite a long time. The FM2n stuck around until 2000, and then the FM3a which combines a lot of the features of both the FM2n and FE2, was introduced then and produced until 2006. The parallels do sort of fall apart from here. Canon made a bunch of iterations of the A series body, including adding full program mode(AE-1P) the multi-mode A-1, and several lower end versions including an aperture priority version(AV-1), a full manual one(AT-1), and even a "focus assist" version, the AL-1. Nikon, meanwhile, updated to the FE2, with a 1/4000 max shutter speed and 1/200 sync speed. Nikon didn't have a direct competitor to the A-series until the EM series came out. The EM was kind of underwhelming, as it was ore or less an AE-only camera. The FG was essentially a direct competitor to the AE-1P with a lot of feature parity including full program. Still, though, both of these cameras had a Copal shutter with a higher sync speed than the A-series cameras. The A-1/FA comparison, to me, is always interesting. The A-1 was my first "good" camera, so I've always had a soft spot for it. For its time, it was very advanced, but still underpinned with the A-series mechanics including the sqeeky mirror. The multi-segment viewfinder read-out was groundbreaking for its time, and IMO it's better than the wimpy LCD that the F3 and FA used. On the other hand, at least on the surface, the FA is just a better built camera. Once again, it's on the more stout FM/FE type body with a 1/250 sync Copal shutter and a 1/4000 maximum shutter speed. The Nikon also steps things up a notch with the "AMP"(Matrix) meter. Of course, the FA was probably a bit too complicated for its own good, and reliability now can be spotty.

Rick, I seem to remember you telling me a story one time about a series of modeling? students coming to your house one evening...am I remembering that correctly?

Sad to see, but not surprised. I thought it was not terribly long ago(in the last year or so) that someone had visited the factory and reported that the F6 line was there but running at extremely low volume(like 50 per month). There's a thread on the Rangefinder forum where a few folks had ordered from B&H in recent years and received SNs higher than previously released production figures. I would have loved a firmware update to use E and AI-P lenses...

I finally broke down and bought one in maybe September of 2019 after threatening to for a while. It's not my most-used camera, but it's still a frequently used one. For one thing, it's kind of perfect for a lot of situations. I take well to the dials, but the redundancy between setting some things with the "real" dials and the hold and spin dials, plus the small and hard front command dial, is annoying. I also don't know why Nikon didn't put a lock on the AI tab like...every other flip up AI tab camera they've ever made... I find the 10 non-CPU lens bank a bit limiting to be honest, especially on this camera. I don't ever carry that many prime lenses, but it means I sometimes have to sit down and reprogram before a trip out. I've said many times that I think NIkon regressed a bit from how these were set on the D2/D200, but that's neither here nor there. I love mine. Not only is it great with MF lenses, but it's also small and lightweight. I've been known to toss a small, light lens like a 35mm f/2D on it and spend an entire vacation with nothing but that on it. The good insanely high ISO means I don't feel like I have to go nuts with a fast prime. I would have loved a tweaked one-say with some quirks smoothed out and maybe updated with the 20mp D5 sensor(although the D4 sensor is no slouch). I figured that was a long shot. I'm sorry to see it gone, but at the same time it was always a niche product and I suspect everyone who wants one already has it.

This is a custom function setting. It's CF 1, and the default value is 0(disable). It's only automatic if you change it to 1(enable).

I'm a fan of the N70. Once you get past the "fan", it's overall a really solid camera with a great range of utility(inc. good MF compatibility) and a much nicer/more refined sounding shutter than the N90 or N8008(I lump those two together since they feel very similar to me and I suspect have mostly the same shutter mechanism). Of course the problem I see with the N70 is if you don't use the fan regularly, which I don't, you can walk yourself into a corner and at least for me it can take some button pushing to get back out of it. In a sense, that was a good way for Nikon to pack a lot of functionality into a comparatively small/simple LCD, but three buttons and a control dial don't make for the easiest navigation.

The F100 had teething pains, and the biggest issue in early ones was a rewind fork that was too light duty. IIRC, Galen Rowell had one break on him in the field and went back to the F4 for a while before finally being convinced to change to the redesigned F100. There are photos of the redesigned fork out there on the web. Don't forget that the F100 was released in the internet age, and you'll find a lot of old discussion/reports about it on some of the older fora, including here. Ken Rockwell(love him or hate him) has a dozen pages on the F100, including IIRC, documentation of his fork replacement. I doubt you could have Nikon repair it now, and for the use most film cameras get now I doubt you'll break even an old style one if it hasn't broken yet in the last 15+ years(the F100 heyday was 1999-2000, and supposedly was in production until 2006).

There's a big price difference in them, which can steer you toward the N90(s). IMO, though, the F100 is an easy choice especially if you're getting it to complement a digital kit/newer lenses. The F100 has a much better AF system. It's not a huge deal to me on film cameras since I don't do action with them, but my N90s has worse low-light sensitivity. The center point on the F100 is a cross-type that works in lower light and with lower contrast, plus you have the 4 additional points if you want them. The F100 loses nothing over the N90 with MF lenses. On the other hand, with newer lenses, you get VR with the F100 plus full functionality with G type lenses(the N90 is limited to P and S). The control layout of the F100 is descended from the F5, and the same basic layout(with some obvious changes and rearrangments) is still in use today with the D850. The two wheel layout is used on the better DSLRs, and hold-the-button, spin-the-dial is used on every Nikon DSLR. I find the F100 significantly more refined than the N90(s) in every way. The shutter on the F100 is a pleasant "snick", while the N90 is a loud "Clack." AF with screwdriver type lenses is quieter. Film advance and rewind are both faster and quieter. There's nothing wrong with the N90, but I can't think of any way in which the F100 isn't better. The F100 is arguably one of Nikon's best film cameras. The F6 is a lot more polished and does a lot more than the F100, and if push came to shove it's what I'd keep/choose over the F100. The F5 is a beast, but it's an action camera at its core and is more than I need when shooting film these days. BTW, I'm not completely talking out my rear end on this. I have at least one of nearly every Nikon film camera ever made, and AFAIK I don't have any holes in my AF film cameras. Most of them never get used, but I've used the N8008s, N90s, F100, F4, F5, and F6 a decent amount. The F4, F100, and F6 are the main AF film cameras I use.

Those are some incredibly sharp images.