Nikon FM3A - first impressions

Well my new toy arrived - a Nikon FM3A.  I put a film through it yesterday to check all the major functions and it all seems good.  It will be interesting to compare results from it and the Leica over the next while.  A proper comparison will require the darkroom, of course, but at first look the scans look very good.  Here's a couple for your amusement.

This first shot is of the Dog-Hound-Thing.  We went for a bit of a stroll over the sand dunes.  Mind you, it's always difficult to get him to stop moving, but he's getting better in his old age - just.

Dog-Hound-Thing

This was captured using a Nikkor 180mm f/2.8 lens - supposedly one of their sharpest.  It's an old lens, manual focus of course and a bit of a beast size- and weight-wise.  But it looks like the snaps are very sharp and have a nice tone to them.  FP4+ on DD-X...my favourite combination.

I opened the lens up to its maximum aperture (f/2.8) to see what the out-of-focus background would look like and was pleasantly surprised - it's very nice, to my eyes anyway:

Out-of-focus rendering

The camera feels very good in the hands - a solid piece of engineering, with a 'rugged, copper-aluminium alloy' body (according to the blurb).  Viewfinder is very bright - on a par with the Leica, I would say, which is very surprising, considering the Leica is one of the very brightest around.  Of course the Leica is a rangefinder and therefore has no prism to absorb the light, so Nikon have done a great job there - it's much brighter than that of the OM-1 that Missy uses.  The OM-1 was considered the best in its day - but of course the FM3A is 30 years newer.

More shots to come tomorrow.

This photography thing...

This photography thing is very addictive.  I've been wondering how come I've re-kindled my interest in it, after a lay-off for a few years during which time I had a career of sorts as an academic.  Actually looking through The Archives there weren't many years when I didn't take any photographs at all - although for a few years they were mostly family and postcard-type snaps...not the Fine Art stuff you see nowadays on this blog (Ed: Ah come on now...).   When my career was in full flow there wasn't really a lot of time left to have a hobby.  The old Academic Life does tend to fill any spare time you might have, what with reading papers, writing research proposals, keeping abreast of other work in your chosen field, supervising PhD students, writing up your own research for publication ... you get my drift - it isn't a 9 to 5 kind of job.  Not that I'm complaining - I lived for and loved my work.  But since I took early retirement a few years ago I haven't given it a second thought.  Like most people who retire, I decided I wasn't for looking back and I haven't.  So now I potter about, look after myself a bit better, take more care of my family and home.

Anyway, as I was saying, the current level of interest in photography is, well, interesting.  Pre-Internet days you had your local clubs, where you could go along once a month or so, listen to a guest speaker, perhaps show some of your prints and enter competitions.  Photographic clubs are still around of course, but applications like Facebook have I believe re-kindled a lot of people's interest in photography.  There are numerous FB groups catering for whatever kind of photography you have an interest in - sport, nature, landscape, candid, film, digital...you name it, there's bound to be a group for it.  One of the groups I belong to - Traditional Film Photography - has more than 10,000 members worldwide.  So there's an instant (large!) audience to show your latest masterpiece to.  The downside is that too many people upload very mediocre photographs.  And of course too many other people say how brilliant those mediocre photographs are, and so it goes on.  But in between the dross there are people who know what they are doing and on balance it's still worthwhile being in the group...for now anyway.

Many photographers (like moi) have their own blog where again they store their finest work (!) in one easily accessible online place.  Of course you need to either do digital or have a scanner for film but for us film users this is a lot better than having all your prints&slides stored in a box in the attic, where if you feel like it you might dig a few out over Christmas to 'show the family'.

Anyway, just to interrupt my musings for a moment, here's a couple of photographs for you.  They were taken during one of my many stays in hospital when I was a teenager - just as my ankylosing spondylitis was getting started on me.  I can date this almost exactly to 1976, in Coleraine hospital.  From memory both these lassies were nurses, but one had the tables turned on her and became a patient for a while.  Check out the well starched uniform on her colleague...eh, they don't do it like nowadays.

Nurses in Coleraine Hospital, c1976

I must have been very bored - but clearly I had a camera with me.  I rather like this next one - not bad for a spotty youth methinks and of course Kodachrome did a great job with the colours, as usual.

Oxygen, anyone?

But I digress.  The think about this photography thing is, when the bug bites, it really bites.  Loads of partners of photographers are, I'm sure, driven mad by the antics of their other half.  Well, not so much their antics as their insatiable desire to acquire cameras and lenses, even when they already have enough to last several lifetimes.  In this regard I think film photographers are worse than digital ones - for two reasons.  Firstly, there are a lot of old film cameras around and most are very affordable nowadays, since their owners have gone over to the digital dark side.  Secondly, there is such a variation of kit around - different camera/lens combinations have individual characteristics with the various films available and it's all just so much fun to play with.

This was all a very roundabout way of saying I've just purchased (yet) another camera.  Now my good wife did raise her eyebrows at this, saying as the last one I bought was a very expensive and very beautiful Leica, which I love to bits.  But of course one single camera can never cover all bases...  The Leica is a rangefinder and therefore is best suited to wide-angle or very short telephoto lenses.  I had an urge to get an SLR again, which is capable of taking much longer telephoto lenses and so after a bit (lot!) of research I settled on a Nikon FM3A.  I'm not keen on all-electronic cameras, since on these older film cameras when the electronics fail they are not repairable, and so end up being an expensive paperweight.  Hence the M6, which is the last of the all-manual Leicas. Now the FM3A is not entirely manual - you can choose between shooting in full manual mode or electronic mode.  So if/when the electronics fail at some point (hopefully a long way away) in the future, the body should still be usable in manual mode.   It was a close thing between the all manual FM2 and the FM3A, but the FM3A is a newer camera and so when I found an FM3A at a very decent price with a 12-month guarantee from a reputable company I pulled the trigger. It's winging its way to me as I type...I'm excited!

Hopefully I'll get a test film through the Nikon tomorrow and be able to show you the results soon!   

Of course what I really lust after is a Hasselblad...but that's another story.  

Road race time again

I've posted before about the annual motorbike road race around these parts - the North West 200, where mad men (and women) hurtle around Portstewart-Coleraine-Portrush roads at speeds up to (and just over) 200mph.  Completely nuts.   I haven't really had the camera/lens setup to take any photographs in recent years and to be honest it's not as easy as it was when I was a lad.  In those days you could stand more or less at the side of the road and get really close to the action.  Nowadays that's not allowed - spectators are being pushed further and further back - for obvious reasons (Risk Assessments, Health and Safety, Public Liability Insurance to name but a few).  Really the organisers want everyone seated in tiered stands and not sticking their head (and camera) through a gap in the hedge.  Completely understandable - if two bikes touch at high speed then no-one nearby is safe.   I was talking to one of the Head Marshalls of the course last year and he recalled an accident at another road race a few years ago when two bikes touched.  One of the bikes somersaulted into the air and crashed up in a tree.  Unfortunately the same tree that a man had climbed to get a better view, thinking he'd be safe up there.  He wasn't - poor man was fatally injured.  So while the major risk is for the riders, there is also a risk for the spectators.

Of course in my day (Ed: eh?) the term Health and Safety hadn't been invented.  Here's a few shots - in colour this time, my favourite Kodachrome - from The Archives.  1979 was the year.

First off we have the local lad, our very own Joey Dunlop, one of the famous (around these parts anyway) Armoy Armada.  Road racing was in Joey's blood and there'll be a few more posts about him on this blog in the future.  Joey was killed riding in Estonia at the age of 48.  Now, remember it's 1979...notice the huge crowds in the background - and the cows aren't very impressed either.  Why is it all the greats wore yellow helmets?  Ayrton Senna, Joey Dunlop, Lewis Hamilton...there must be a story there somewhere.

Joey Dunlop

Next we have another local lad and Grand Prix racer - Tom Herron.  Tom was tragically killed on the last lap of the last race of the NW200 in 1979, so this is probably one of the last ever photographs of him.  One thing that always amazes me is the complete lack of protection for the riders in those days - not even a straw bale in sight along this stretch of road...just concrete walls and metal lamp posts.  Any wonder there were so many fatalities.  When I see this photograph it's hard to think about Tommy Herron the man who lost his life later this very day.  I suppose when your time is up it's better to be wearing #1.

Tom Herron, 1979

The 1979 race day was a tragic one - known afterwards as 'Black Saturday' since there were a number of fatalities that day. A major crash occurred on the Cromore Road - the course was altered soon after, which removed this long straight section.  The Brother and I were standing close by at the time  - we often moved along the back roads between races just to get a different vantage point.  I wonder what these riders were thinking as they passed the scene..."Thank flip that's not me", I suspect.

Fatal crash at Cromore Road, 1979

Maybe this year I'll dust the camera off and get out and about on Race Day - in about 3 weeks time.  Stay tuned...

On film

Even the casual reader of this blog will know by now that I am a film user.   Of course when I was a callow youth there was only film.  Ilford B&W films were a favourite - and still are.  The brother and I had our darkroom which our dad built for us - he was handy with the old woodwork, he was. After a few years 'perfecting' black and white processing and printing we both felt the urge to experiment with colour processing.  I took quite a few colour films and developed them - not very successfully I seem to remember.  Printing in the darkroom was a whole other game entirely - no safelight allowed, everything had to be done in total darkness.  And then the temperature was so much more critical than B&W.

Both the brother and I took colour slides as well - Kodachrome was the #1 film of choice, since Kodak did the processing and sent you back the slides in their iconic little yellow box.  Ektachrome was another Kodak product but was purchased without processing included, so you had the option of doing it yourself.  Then Cibachrome came along which allowed you to make colour prints from your slides - The Brother was a big Cibachrome user, me less so.

I came across this snap the other day - I think to be fair it was The Brother's.  Both him and I worked in photographic stores (different ones) during our teenage years and at some point he must have pointed his camera (loaded with Kodachrome) at a shelf and this was captured for posterity:

Film, c1979

What a sexy photograph, don't you agree?  Look at the names - Ilford, Agfa, Kodak, Fuji, Kodachrome, Ektachrome, Fujicolor, FP4, PanF...fantastic. And the different formats - 135 (35mm), 120, 127.  Thing is, in those days we never thought there would be anything other than film.  But as you all know the world has (by and large) gone digital and now people lust after CF cards in the same we did for film - or maybe not.  Kodak stopped manufacturing Kodachrome in 2009 and stopped processing in 2010.  Ilford are still around and manufacture PanF, FP4+ and HP5+ (as well as other faster films), although these are different films to those available in the 70s.  You can still buy Kodak and Fujicolor print film.  In fact Fuji still sell Velvia, a superb colour slide film, though it ain't cheap at nearly £20 for a 36 exposure film, processed and mounted.

I can't see myself going back to processing my own colour film but I can maybe - just maybe - see myself using colour slide film again.  There is something very special about the colour you get from slide film - as I hope to show here once I get some more scanning done.

Mother

Delving through some old slides I came across a couple of mother as she was in the 1970s.

Mother, sometime in the late 1970s

She has a rather quizzical look about her in this shot - wonder what she was thinking?  Probably something along the lines of 'I wish he would stop taking pictures of me'.  Lovely tonal range in this one, methinks - and just look at that background!  Nowadays people who know would be cooing over the 'creamy bokeh' or some such nonsense.  In those days no-one knew what bokeh was - but we did understand depth of field.

For some strange reason most of our shots from that era seemed to be in the winter time - no foliage on the trees, as you can see.  It all adds to the grim memories of that time, when times were hard, etc etc (a la Monty Python).

Mother sporting some winter fashion

Another example of using depth of field to isolate the subject - but check out the head-gear!  And a decent winter coat as well - now that was 1970s style alright.

These are probably two of the best shots of Mother from that era.  Nowadays she won't let a camera point anywhere near her direction, so shots are hard to come by - although I did manage to get one when she wasn't looking, which you can see (again) here.

Me on Kodachrome

So after the glamour of the French Riviera it's back to the good old North East Liberties for our content.  Regular readers (Ed: eh?) will know that my interest in photography started when I was a teenager and developed from there (if you pardon the pun).  Both The Brother and I were prolific shooters of film back in the 1970s (well, there was only film in those days of course) and pointed our various cameras at anyone and anything that moved (and quite a lot of things that didn't).  As well as having boxes of prints dating from that era on my shelf there is also a whole dose of slides kicking around.  I finally got round to opening a box or two and scanning them.

It has been a real delight looking at photographs taken with the legendary Kodachrome - a film so good Paul Simon wrote a song about it!  Kodachome films were purchased with the development costs included - once finished, you sent if off to Kodak and a week or two later a little yellow box dropped through your letter box with 24 or 36 slides in their little plastic mounts.

The way Kodachrome captures colours is just beautiful - it's a shame that Kodak discontinued production of it in December 2010 - less than 5 years ago!   But since we read all the time that there is a growing interest in film again perhaps Kodak, or a spin-off, will resurrect this fabulous emulsion.

Now I know I've said that I don't do colour - and that's true, I don't.  But I did, back in my youth.  And speaking of youth, here's me back then, so to speak:

Me, on Kodachrome c1978

As you can see I'm full loaded here, with both a 35mm and a 6x6 twin lens reflex camera.  The 35mm is my lovely little OM-1, with a 200mm f/4 Zuiko lens attached.  The TLR I'm not so sure about - I think it's borrowed (I don't remember ever buying one) and could well be a Yashica 124G.  This shot is taken down our road, where I still live today - I returned to live in the North East Liberties where I grew up after many long years in the wilderness (aka England).  So this is a shot just crying out for a 'then and now' treatment - sadly the 'now' won't be on Kodachrome but it still might prove an interesting shot all the same.  It's on my 'to-do' list...

Aren't the colours just so real?  I mean, what else can give you luscious greens like that?  And so much depth - it almost looks 3D.

Notice that I'm not mentioning the flares - d'oh!  Ah well, it was the 1970s and as I'm reliably informed by some-one 'in the know', flares are back.  

The Olympus OM-1 was (and still is) a pretty little camera - it was quite revolutionary when it arrived on the scene in the early 1970s.  Up to then the market was dominated by Nikon and Canon (no change there, then) but Olympus shook their tree with the OM-1.  It was so much smaller&lighter than anything that Canon or Nikon had and had a really bright viewfinder.  And it was a proper system camera, with lenses from 21mm to 600mm, motor drives, flashguns and all the accessories.  Many professionals adopted it as their preferred camera - people like Don McCullin and David Bailey.  You can still buy one today, although they are aging now and usually need a good service. The best thing about them is that they are purely manual cameras - no electronics, just need a battery for the light meter (if you need it, that is - the camera works perfectly well with or without a functioning meter).   Of course in those days the battery was a little mercury affair, which are no longer available, but this isn't a huge problem to fix.

I can remember saving hard to buy one - it cost around £170 in 1976 (if memory serves me correctly), which apparently equates to a figure of around £1200 today.  Blimey!  That's a heck of a lot of birthday and Christmas savings - probably about 11 years' worth.  Soon afterwards I got a Saturday job in the photographic department of a local chemists which came in very handy - I worked every Friday afternoon, all day Saturday and every holiday until I left school and so had good money to feed my photography habit.

Here's another photograph from that era.

Yours truly, sometime in the late 1970s

Le wrap-up

Well we're nearly at the end of our week in Antibes but here are a few shots that just didn't fit into the other posts this week.

Un Cafe, Antibes

Now doesn't this just scream La Dolce Vita to you - or whatever the French equivalent is.  What a lovely little place for your morning espresso and croissant, or whatever gets your motor going.   Just sit back, chill and do a little people-watching.  Just relaxes you thinking about it, doesn't it.

Not so long ago you would have seen lots of little old Renault 4s, or Citroen 2CVs darting about the cities of France - not the 2CVs really darted, more like wheezed and lurched, but you get my drift.  In this part of the world, having such a warm climate, cars seemed to last forever.  We didn't see very many old cars this time around, so when we came across one I had to snap it up, for posterity, like.  As you do.

Which would you rather drive?

Ah...such character in the old cars compared to that new Japanese thing behind it, n'est-ce pas?  The observant among you (eh?) will have clocked a certain Missy in the background, ambling along quite content with the world, OM-1 slung casually over her back.  Oh to be young again...

Nice pant job

This homage to the 1960s was spotted near the March Provençale and belonged to an artist type - not that you can tell...much!  You will of course have noticed that it's pointing the wrong way, according to the sign.  But then those artists chaps and chapettes just don't do rules, do they?  And quite right too...

Well that brings to an end the great French adventure of Easter 2015.  Hope you enjoyed it - we did!