This camera acquisition was a fuck-up. It all started with my Leica obsession and stubbornness to admit that Leica cameras are better than the rest. It is my belief that when it comes to film photography, the results you get are entirely from the lens quality and the film stock. The camera itself is merely a lightproof box that opens and closes at a desired speed. As long as this speed is accurate, then how much better can one camera be? So after some research, I decided to purchase (debatably) the best film SLR ever produced. The Nikon F3 is regarded by some as an O.G. 80’s professional camera, complete with aesthetics and red stripe by an Italian Ferrari designer - Giorgetto Giugiaro.
My Nikon F3 with Nikon Nikkon 50mm F/1.8
So, all going well, I bought a simple Leica to Nikon lens adapter to mount my Leica 35mm Summicron onto the F3. The idea would be to compare it with another 35mm lens and hopefully yield some good (Leica-esk) results!! This was a big fail. I didn’t do enough research. It turns out that although the Summicron physically fits on the camera, it sits too far from the film to focus. Thus focussing to infinity was actually about 2cm in front of the lens (new macro lens??). Anyway, after the initial frustration wore off I decided to shoot the camera as is. I made a mental contract with myself not to sell the camera until I have run at least 10 rolls of film through it.
Thoughts and feelings?? I love it. there are simple analog functions with the camera that you can tell would have blown people away in 1980’s. I was playing around the the “double exposure” funtion a little bit but didnt get anything great i would say. I’m also not mad about the Portra 400 colours on this expired roll (i also think the developers may have ruined it a bit, there were some shockers on the roll). Anyways this is roll 1 and im pretty pleased. Next i will run some b&w through it. I think ill experiment more with the double exposure function a little more and tru to create something artistic i can print. We’ll see. More to come.
