A tale of two Wideangle lenses

Nikon in the 1960s and 1970s made some really 28mm wideangle lenses. Here is a back to back comparison between the fast Nikkor N 28 f2 lens and the classic Nikkor H 28 f3.5 while slower has very high performance in it's own right.

I borrowed my brother's Nikkor N 28 f2 lens a few months ago to play with, it was made for photojournalists working in less than ideal light. So does it stack up with my beloved Nikkor H 28 f3.5? I don't know, going through my Flickr account and doing a comparison, I prefer my slower 28. This is just comparing negative scans, the real test will be printing from the negatives.

Now if you want to read up more on the subject, check out Photography in Malaysia's pages on the Nikkor 28mm lenses. I do not hold myself responsible if after reading you get a case of Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS).

Top two were taken with the Nikkor N 28 f2 lens up at Limehouse Conservation Area and the bottom photos two Nikkor H 28 f3.5 lens in Oakville Ontario. The camera body was a Nikon F2 and the film was Kodak Tri-X processed in Xtol 1+1.

The Magic Image

This is not a perfect image, it's not totally razor sharp but I love it. I wanted to give the impression you are on Bay St. downtown Toronto in the middle of the crowd and I nailed it.

I used my last roll of Efke 50 in my Leica M3, the perfect film/camera combo. I can hand hold at slow shutter speeds and I get a really cool vintage look because the manufacturing process with Efke films has not changed in 50 years.

We all love some fall colour.

Shot a few weeks ago up on the way to and at Forks of the Credit Provincial Park. I used my Olympus OM-1 MD with Kodak Elite 200 slide film, the black and white set will follow later in another posting.

One of the bonuses of babysitting my brother's camera equipment while he and his family moves house is I get to play with some really cool toys. In this case a Leicaflex Sl, Leitz's answer to the Japanese SLR juggernaut in the 1960's, alas for them, loo little, too late.

That being said Leica SLR lenses are really nice glass and it's a shame they never made them in third party mount for example Nikon F, Pentax K mount, etc.

In this particular set, I went out on a damp Sunday morning with a black Leicaflex SL and got a chance to put a 21 F4 Super Angulon through it's paces along with the 35 f2 R Summicron that I used as the prime lens on the camera. The film used was Fuji Pro 160 S rated at 100 ISO.

This is something I don't to anywhere near as often as I should, shoot people and portraits. I have to step out of my comfort zone once in a while. Not that I am bad shooting people, it's a different dynamic the capturing a landscape or a street scene.

The top two are of Hayley and Kieley respectively, taken with a Rolleiflex Automat with a 75 f3.5 Schneider Xenar lens with Ilford Delta 400 film at the OCC AGM a month ago. The bottom headshot is of my friend Derik shot on a Nikon F3 Press Camera with a Nikkor Ai 200 f4 wide open with Kodak Tri-x 400.

I am so doomed with medium format, my only saving grace is not falling in love with the Hasselblad 500 CM 6x6 SLR system. I am devoted to Rolleiflex in terms of weight and ergonomics after trying out Alex's Mamiya C220F. It's a heavy twin lens reflex camera with interchangeable lenses which is nice if you need to switch between wide, prime and telephoto. Personally I find the Mamiya too heavy, I prefer hand old shooting over tripod work and Rollei just plain works for me.

Now while I only have negative scans here, I did print from 6x6 negatives last night. It takes some getting used to in terms of exposure but the end results done right blow my mind. Thank you Alex for loaning me your Nikkor 80 f5.6 EL lens, it will be put to good use the next few months.

Kodak Tri-x 400 is one of those legacy black and white films that can be used for most photographic situations. What I like about it is you can push (deliberately underexpose) up to 3200 ISO and get a decent negative with stand development with Rodinal Developer.

The images below were shot on a Nikon FE2 I re-sealed for my brother and I wanted to test it out. The roll of Tri-x was exposed at 3200 and processed in 1:100 Rodinal so if I was mixing up a 500ml solution it would have 5ml of Rodinal concentrate. I stand developed for two hours starting off with 30 seconds of gentle agitation and after that three gentle agitations every half hour. The solution temperature was at 20c, give or take a degree.

The biggest mistake people do when using this combination is over agitating the tank full of developer or being too aggressive with the agitation. That will introduce a lot of grain which most times you don't want.

This is my go to combination for doing event photography for my IABC chapter, parties and concerts. It works well for me and I can get decent prints up to 8x10" easily.