Another Nikon EM

My Nikon EM developed a problem I was unable to fix.  I haven't used the EM a lot, but I liked it for it's compactness and reliable performance.  I decided I would like to replace the camera, though it seemed unlikely I would find another  for the same cost of $10 which I paid at a neighbor's yard sale.  

To my surprise I did find another Nikon EM on ebay for $13.  A test roll of expired film showed the shutter and meter working, but all the images had a broad stripe light leak near center.  I scraped the old seal material out of the channels on the back of the body and replaced it with black yarn.  What actually got rid of the leak, however, was a strip of black foam which I installed near the back hinge.  I then shot a new roll of Kentmere 400  while walking the dog around the neighborhood, and that showed the new seals to be performing properly. 

The residence of the Brothers Mathias is just across the street, so it has ended up being the subject of a lot of camera tests.  I noticed some nice shadows on the building late in the afternoon, so I made a picture that shows a broader view of the structure than I have shown in the past.

One of the Brothers welcomed us to the neighborhood when we moved in fifteen years ago.  That is the only time I recall speaking with any of the residents.

So I'm pleased to have a working Nikon EM again, particularly because I nearly always have used the camera with the nice little 1.8/50mm Series E lens which probably would not get much use otherwise.

Stand Development

Stand development doesn't necessarily produce better results than many other techniques, but it is certainly simpler and less costly.  These images on Kentmere 100 were stand developed with 5ml of Rodinal in 500ml of distilled water, a 1:100 dilution.  That yields a developer cost of about sixteen cents per roll.  To that you have to add in the cost of fixer, distilled water and shipping charges, but the total per roll is still nearly negligible.

Time and temperature requirements for most processing procedures usually require quite precise control.  Those variables in stand development however are not critical.  In this case, I just used the developing solution at room temperature without recourse to a thermometer.  The developer was poured into the plastic film tank and the timer was set for thirty minutes after thirty seconds of initial agitation.  After that, I did not touch the tank until the buzzer sounded, at which point I agitated the tank for a few seconds and then left everything to sit for another thirty minutes.

Another nice feature of the stand development process is that no allowance need be made for different films or film speeds. It doesn't matter if you are using a slow, fine grained film like Kentmere 100 or something faster like Tri-X.

I have gotten similarly nice results from stand development using HC-110, and the cost is even slightly less as I have been able to use just 4ml of developer in 640ml of water for a dilution of 1:160.

There are a lot of recipes for stand development available on the web which advise small differences in total time and dilutions, but it seems the results are little different.  A good overview of the process is given at the hjlphotos site.

Learning to shoot the Nikon FE

Nikon FE

My early interest in photography got put on hold in favor of other interests and the requirement to attend to my family's needs.  When I got back to photography after retirement I basically picked up where I had left off with my Pentax Spotmatic which I had acquired in 1970.  I made a lot of pictures with the Spotmatic slr in the 1990s and also started picking up other film cameras that preceded the Pentax, mostly old folders and box cameras.
    Meanwhile, of course, the photo industry had gone on developing new technology after the Spotmatic which I largely ignored.  The major contenders introduced sophisticated multi-point metering, aperture-priority auto-exposure and lenses with computer generated aspherical designs and many multi-coated elements to resist internal reflections. Electronics replaced mechanical linkages and actuators, leading ultimately to auto-focusing, and film technology kept pace.  Thanks to some generous gifts of equipment recently I have enjoyed the opportunity to explore film camera tech developments in the latter half of the Twentieth Century before the whole industry jumped off the digital cliff.

The Nikon FE incorporates all of the tech refinements of its period allowing the photographer to stay focused on compositional issues while the camera takes care of exposure.  However, the user also retains the capacity to operate the camera in full manual mode, with user-selected shutter speeds ranging from 8 seconds to 1/1000 sec.  The viewfinder is very bright, with concentric circles to refine focus, and the display shows both aperture and shutter speed.  The construction of the camera and the smoothness of operation inspires confidence in the system's capacity to deliver images as envisioned.  The range of lenses available to the Nikon user were seemingly endless and of unsurpassed quality. 

I am particularly impressed with the ergonomic design of the FE.  All the controls seem to be in just the right place, and nothing important has been omitted.  I especially like the lever location of the depth-of-focus feature which is right where your shutter finger can easily find it. 

I'm still not inclined to leave behind my old folders and box cameras, but I do think that a sophisticated late-film-period camera like the FE can teach any photographer some new tricks.  I have certainly been encouraged in using the camera to explore image possibilities that I might have overlooked with some of my simpler machines.  Not every imaging experiment is a success, but I think there is no doubt that failures too are an important source of new understanding.

I liked the mid-morning light on this new Fiat during a walk through Albuquerque's downtown.  I harbor a special fondness for the little Italian; I bought one new in 1963, drove it a couple years and sold it for near what I paid for it.  It was great speeding down the highway at 100 -- kph, of course.  Even though it was only 60mph it sounded like 100 miles per hour.  Another place, another time, another life.

The Bernalillo County District Courthouse is a prominent downtown landmark.  The first-floor facade does not quite fit the rest of the design, but both the morning sun and the night-time lighting create impactful architectural impressions.  I snapped this shot from the grounds of the Federal Court House across the street, as well as a couple shots of some nice landscaping there.  Right afterward I was approached by a blazer-clad security person who informed me that photography was not permitted on federal property.  That seems like it takes in a lot of territory.  I'm going to have to look into the particulars of that assertion.

On the walk back home I found this nice unclassified agave to photograph without concern for security clearances.

I should probably paying royalties to the owners of this fine old pickup given the number of pictures I have made of it on my regular morning walks.  It is always parked in a different place in the vicinity, so it is nice to know it is still in daily use.

Up to now I have most always used color film in my slr cameras and most often reserved black and white for use in my rangefinders and simpler cameras.  The results I have been getting recently from the Nikon and the Pentax ME have encouraged me to further explore the pairing of newer technology with black and white processing, particularly in regard to my new-found interest in pyro developers.

On the way to Zuzax

I installed a new beam-splitter mirror in my Leica IIIa with hopes that would enhance the brightness of the viewfinder.  The operation went pretty smoothly thanks to some good on line instructions.  Aside from adding a slight yellow tint to the rangefinder spot, there was little improvement. So, the view through the Leica is still about on a par with that in most of my other old rangefinder cameras.  Fortunately, my surgically enhanced vision makes using any of them more practical.  After slightly readjusting the camera's rangefinder I took it for a photo walk into Old Town.  Mounted on the Leica was the collapsible Industar 22.  The film was Tri-X rated at ASA 200 in anticipation of PMK Pyro processing.

I found the nice old Chevy Wagon parked in front of the church in the Plaza Vieja.  It was one I had not seen before and it looked like it just came off the showroom floor.  Since there is always some nice light in the Museum's sculpture garden I stopped off there too, as I always do when testing any new gear or techniques.

The next day I decided to stick with the vehicle theme and made a short road trip East on I-40.  Leaving Albuquerque, the frontage road is actually a long stretch of  the old Route 66 highway.  There is a big collection of unrestored cars and trucks on the South side of the highway which I have gone by many times, and I decided the time had come to pay it a visit.  This time, I mounted the 35mm Jupiter 12 on the Leica along with the accessory viewfinder.

The yard full of old trucks and cars is on a dead-end off the old highway between Tijeras and Zuzax.  It turns out to be attached to a well regarded East Mountain repair shop, Charlie's Fleet Service.  Charlie and his dogs greeted me at his front door; he said I was welcome to make some pictures so long as I did not open any doors or hoods. 

Part of my plan for the day was to compare Tri-X in PMK with HC-110 semi-stand processing.  After finishing off the roll in the Leica I shot a roll of Tri-X at box speed in the Nikon FE.  The Nikon Series E 50mm and the Rokunar 28mm performed nicely,  but Fate's fickle finger poked a hole in my strategy.

After an hour in the highly dilute HC-110, I fixed and washed the Tri-X from the Nikon.  When I pulled the film off the reel I was dismayed to see that it was a nearly opaque gray color with the images barely discernible.  It looked like a problem with the fixer, so I stuffed the strip of film back in the tank and soaked it for another ten minutes.  The gray was cleared and the negatives looked normal when I took them from the tank again.  I don't know if I just misjudged the time, or if the fixer was near exhaustion.  So, I got some reasonably good pictures from the Nikon after all, but the comparison test was mooted.

Still, a good day.

New eyes on new gear

I picked up the Nikon EM at a yard sale for ten bucks a while back.  The camera worked ok, but I didn't like the Tokina zoom lens it came with so I set the camera aside after shooting just a roll or two of film.

The Tokina zoom made nice enough images, but the f3.5 maximum aperture coupled with the zoom feature seemed to create a problem with the viewfinder's focusing spot; it tended to black out if the eye was not positioned just right.  The problem was less noticeable when zoomed back to 35 or 50mm.  That got me thinking that I would be better off with some kind of prime lens.  So, I started looking around for a Series E Nikon lens that came standard on the EM.  One turned up recently on the local Craigslist at a price of $30, so I met the seller in a McDonald's parking lot to get the Nikon prime.

The Nikon Series E 50mm 1.8 lens made the Nikon EM into a nicely compact and rather light-weight system.  The images from the lens were unsurprisingly sharp and undistorted.  I don't think the pictures are noticeably better than many of my other lenses on the Spotmatic or other cameras, including those with the older Tessar-type such as my Vito II or the Contessa.  I did find that having a bright view in the finder and a clear focus did encourage exploring more subjects in depth.

It turned out the guy I met at McDonald's had brought along several other Nikon-mount lenses.  The one that interested me was an Aetna Rokunar MC Auto f2.8 28mm for twenty bucks.  Well, why not?

I found a few derogatory comments about the lens on line later, but the results I got from it seemed excellent to me, comparable to the Nikon prime.  Also, the Rokunar gets me seamlessly close to macro with a minimum focal distance of less than a foot.

The meter on the EM reads a stop low, and some of the images show a small amount of shutter capping.  The camera is not particularly friendly to diy repairs and I doubt I will try to correct the small defects.  I like aperture-priority automation, though it would be nice to have the option to over-ride that at will.  Over-all I can't complain about the camera's performance in view of what I have invested so far.  I would like to try the lenses on another camera for the sake of comparison.  I may have to hunt down an old Nikon F body.  Darn.