I did something today I haven’t done for a long time: take a walk by the waterfront with a camera. We caught a 26 from the foot of our street out to Musselburgh then walked back in to Portobello. It wasn’t a long walk, only about 3.5 miles or so, but it was enjoyable, from the waterfowl at the foot of the Esk round to the prom. in Portobello.
I had two cameras with me but pretty much only used one. In my pocket nearly all the time was my Bessa-R with a 1947 Leica lens on the front, loaded with colour film. I love that wee camera and lens, but today was about my late Father-in-law’s Nikon F301, a Tamron 25mm lens with an orange filter, and TriX400 film.
The nature of film photography is that I can’t put instant scans or prints here, you’ll just have to take my word for it, but I enjoyed the process of just getting out of the house and seeing what I could see, as well as the sea wind in my face and all that good stuff. And, because we can go on the bus, it is a cheap journey to repeat (even cheaper next October when I qualify for a bus pass 🙂 ).
The F301 is not normally thought of as a classic Nikon SLR, and I guess by the usual standards it isn’t. You can get one really cheap on eBay or sometimes in charity shops. I think that’s unfair but in the end I don’t really care. It is robust (metal construction), has a decent lightmeter, can be used manually or, as I did today, on aperture-priority, and has two point-and-shoot programme modes if you feel lazy. More importantly, it works with a lot of classic Nikon and aftermarket lenses, that I can happily swap onto my Nikon FM.
The more awkward problem is that it just isn’t as easy to get film developed as it used to be. That’s why I’m thinking of processing my own black and white film, something I haven’t done for nearly thirty years.
Why an orange filter? I hear you ask; simple, I don’t have a yellow filter to fit the lens.
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