I recently acquired a pair of old film SLR's with a nice selection of lenses. One of the cameras is older than me and both are fully manual Nikons. There are batteries for the light meter that illuminates symbols inside the viewfinder to tell you if you are over or underexposed. With that you then adjust the shutter speed or aperture accordingly to capture the image. The focus is also manual. Very simple and bombproof! And the method for ensuring a crisp manual focus is ingenious!
Be sure to click on the pictures to view them larger.
I loaded one of the cameras up with some expired black and white film I had laying around and the other with expired color and went on a road trip. The expired color still worked okay, but nothing to really write home about. It was a little faded and lacked some of the contrast and vibrancy, but not bad. I think new color film will be much better!
The black and white film provided a very vintage feel.
While cruising down the road I looked off to my right and saw a cattle drive. I had to stop to watch and take some pictures. I had to work quickly since the herd was moving fast. These were some of the first pictures taken with the camera so I was quite excited to happen across such an event, but also nervous since I had no idea if the camera even worked or that I was using it correctly.
The 80-200mm lens was needed to zoom into the herd as they were quite a ways away.
Overall, I am very pleased with the equipment and can't wait to use it more and have some enlargements printed. I love the feel and quality of the images and the heft of the old cameras. They are so solidly built with actual metal and glass that they should last a very long time.
Comments