Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Lesson Learned, Again and DSLR Saves the Day
I still shoot film, not as often as before, but I still enjoy it. I recently acquired a large assortment of 35mm camera gear that someone else decided to retire. I also received a few rolls of film that were expired. For my testing of a Canon T70 that I revived, I used a roll of Kodak Max 800. I should have known this from past experience, but I never should have used this film because it was an unknown quantity. I was never impressed by Kodak's high ISO color print film to begin with, but upon getting the roll back from the lab, I realized that using this roll of film to test the camera's capabilities was utterly useless and a complete waste of effort. The results were dismal, lots of grain and very poor color. I say that this is a lesson learned once again because I already went through this process of discovery years ago when after that first time, I decided to standardize on a known and tested high quality film for all my shooting. I believe that I will have to institute this personal rule once again now that I'm beginning to shoot more film again. I say that my DSLR saved the day because I decided to take it out along with my Canon to test the other recent acquisition, a 28mm f2.8 AF-n Nikkor lens. I'm glad I did because I managed to get some usable images from testing the 28mm lens while I was at wasting my time on the bad film.
This picture was taken with my Nikon D100 w/ Nikkor 28mm f2.8 AF-n. I find that I really enjoyed using the 28mm. It has been many years since I owned a 28mm prime, and I missed using it until now. Well, 28mm is equivalent to 42mm on the D100, and that is also a welcome focal length because up to now, I only had 24mm and 50mm in AF lenses for the D100. Many people, who I suspect really have no practical experience with this lens, say that it is not one of Nikon's better lenses, but as you can see from this picture, it is more than adequate to capture the many details in this scene, from the rocky crevasses in the foreground to the tree branches in the foggy background.
Thanks for visiting my blog and reading this article. I would appreciate your thoughts on this.
--Warren
Rocky Bridge, Stow Lake, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco:
# posted by Warren T. : 7:00 AM
