I Still Shoot Film – Occasionally

I still shoot film - Nikkormat FT2 with 43-80 zoom and 28mm prime lens
Nikkormat FT2

Perhaps to say I still shoot film – even occasionally – is a little bit of a white lie

It has been about 12 months since I last put a 35mm film through any camera. I do, however, still have a functioning Canon EOS 1000F which I fully intend to use again some time soon – so watch this space!

This post about shooting film is nothing more than a weak excuse to publish another story.

Two years ago I had accumulated seven film cameras, most of which I had brought back from the “dead” by way of refurbishing them.

In my collection was a Nikkormat FT2, described in this classic camera review as “the poor man’s Nikon F“.

The FT2 that I had was accompanied by a Nikon 43-86 zoom, which made the number 1 spot in Ken Rockwell’s list of 10 worst never Nikon lenses. He called it “the worst lens Nikon has ever made“.

Subject to a lot of flaring and ghosting, the 43-86 produced soft images. Soft in the middle of the image, soft around the edges of the image – soft everywhere. It didn’t have an overly useful zoom range, plus it was heavy and somewhat clunky to use.

Almost as clunky as the Nikkormat FT2 itself.

Sporting a die-cast aluminium body the FT2 weighs almost 900 grams without a lens. It also features the most unconventional shutter speed adjustment I’ve ever come across. Shutter speed is set by a hard-to-adjust concentric ring mounted up against the front of the camera body around the lens mount. Weird!

Be that as it may I enjoyed my time with the combination of Nikkormat FT2 and 43-86 zoom.

 

Red rose in my back garden

A red back yard rose

car enthusiasts chatting at edendale crank

A couple of car enthusiasts chatting

rural letterboxes on the roadside in Souhtland New Zealand

Rural letterboxes

graffiti painted on the brick wall of an old warehouse

Graffiti wall

St Johns Church Invercargill

St Johns Church Invercargill

Photos were taken with a Nikkormat FT2 and Nikon 43-86mm zoom, and shot on Fujicolor C200 film.

Some post processing work – mainly to tidy up the the bad negative scanning on my part – was done in On1 PhotoRAW 2022.

Please feel free to leave any comments – good or bad – below….

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *