Bill Smith's Photography

 We're at the other end of this trio of Fomapan 400 negatives, and a bookend, if I started off with my Leica R5, the Nikon FE2, is probably the closest competing camera body when they were both on the market in the 1980s. While Leica's R5 had features, the Nikon FE2, had two modes, full manual mode, and aperture priority, and shared a lot under the skin with the Nikon FA. If Nikon held off another six months the FE2 would have come with Matrix metering but product planners were hell bent on getting Matrix Metering on the market.  The philosophy of the FE2 would be under the file,  simple and rugged.  While I own both the R5 and FE2 and love both cameras, if I were to recommend a system, Nikon will win every single time for practical reasons. Nikkor glass is cheaper and almost as good as Leica R glass, and are more repair techs that will be able to work on the Nikon FE2 as there are more parts available.  Camera: Nikon FE2, Nikkor Ai and AIS lenses.  Film: F...

This was from a roll of Kodak Gold 200, stored at room temperature in my condo, expiry date, unknown, I'm going to say, current, and leave it at that.  I wandered around the neighbourhood with my Nikon FE2 and Nikkor AIS 35 F2 lens and kept things simple.  Scanning into TIF files prior to importing into Lightroom, I was blown away with the previews, granted there were some very minor colour tweaks and cropping the image as well as some dust/space junk removal. Heck it makes you question why you want drop big money on Portra series of films. Again I'm not looking for perfection I want to capture the essence of the 1980s and '90s, not the faded photos when the blue dye couplers give up in family photos but more how they looked when the prints were fresh. Yup, old enough to remember the first time around.  I over expose my rolls of Gold 200 at around 100-125 ISO and I get a lovely punch with colour.  Camera: Nikon FE2, Nikkor AIS 35 F2 lens.  Film: Kodak Gold 200, ...