Horses for courses, innit? Can you imagine trying to snap an F1 race with an 8x10 plate camera? Ansel Adams might have stood a chance, but most of his subjects didn't move very much. -- Dave GS850x2 XS650 SE6a "A scone and tea at half past three Makes the day a little brighter Keep your cakes and fancy tarts And stick them up your shiter."
Indeed, and I'm glad of it too. When the digi revolution came many threw out the baby with the bathwater, in the mistaken impression their old kit was of no use anymore. -- Dave GS850x2 XS650 SE6a "A scone and tea at half past three Makes the day a little brighter Keep your cakes and fancy tarts And stick them up your shiter."
Can I just chip in here. My ex is a lo-fi camera[1] user and does some fucking interesting work with it. Get over yourselves will you? [1] And actively seeks out rubbish optical/digital cameras for source material.
If image is everything, surely the thing to have would be a Leica M3 with a 90mm f:2.8 Elmarit and a roll of Pan F?
<pats M2> Yes? And? Actually, there are some Adox emulsions out there that are even finer-grained than PAN F and produce spectacular results.
Excessively fashionable, smacks of trying too hard. Back in the early '90s, I was using Ektar 25 in Super Ikontas and the like.
Why not? Whatever suits the user. But imo, relying solely on AF is short-sighted. One should always have a fall-back position if the gear fucks up (and it will, surely at the most awkward time). That means knowing how to use manual settings if necessary and being familiar enough with them to pull off a good shot reliably. Every AF snapper who is in any way serious about their craft should have an MF lens that they are familiar with that will allow them to get some in. -- Dave GS850x2 XS650 SE6a "A scone and tea at half past three Makes the day a little brighter Keep your cakes and fancy tarts And stick them up your shiter."
Or know how to flick the switch on the lens to MF, then focus it in the traditional way, perhaps? Buying a manual lens to do so would just be posing with retro equipment for the sake of it.
Depends on what you want them for, isn't it? For a compact, discreet camera that looks like a toy to most people and has superb lenses, they're very hard to beat. Unfortunately Kodak dropped a lot of emulsions like that - I'm glad I can still get Tri-X for the time being, but other than that and the resurrected Ilford (with a somewhat limited range, too), you'll need to go to specialist suppliers these days.
What about when the surprisingly crappy plastic gears fail? No MF then, old bean. <taps side of nose> <ow> Nowt wrong with a Tamron SP 28-80 in yer bag as standby - a lens for life, for them wot knows. Actually, there's only one lens I've got that's a bit of a poseurs weapon - the Novaflex. It's just soooo big. It's one I lusted after 30 years ago. Cost me a tenth of the new price for NOS from a German dealer. -- Dave GS850x2 XS650 SE6a "A scone and tea at half past three Makes the day a little brighter Keep your cakes and fancy tarts And stick them up your shiter."
I still have my beloved Lubitel. I rather perversely used it to document one of my trips across Stalinist Europe. I'd decided on using ORWO film (which had to be processed in the GDR) and they were never seen again. Inefficient bastards.
I used mine for covert hand-held low-light shots of the ceiling of the Pitti Palace, and they came out a lot better than expected. You shouldn't have been taking pictures of the missile silos.
There's a UK lab which processes old film stock, but it's not cheap. I'll have a rummage. -- Dave GS850x2 XS650 SE6a "A scone and tea at half past three Makes the day a little brighter Keep your cakes and fancy tarts And stick them up your shiter."
It's not even as if you *have* to use DX lenses with Nikon DSLRs. So long as they have an AF-S drive, a 35mm F-mount lens will work fine, you just need to adjust for the sensor size. I have my eye on a 70-300 VR2 zoom (eq. 105-450 DX) and an 18-200 VR DX. The former should be rather handy for airshows, etc, and the latter would replace my existing kit lenses and eliminate all that irritating lens swapping. I just need to arrange to be drunk in front of a computer and then I'm sure they'll arrive in the post a few days later. And then I only need to learn how to take decent photos!
