Old gear, thinking back & starting anew!

So, here I am, getting back into serious photography again, and that is not the first time!

Since my first start in photography is now ~40 years in the past, and also since I have all this Nikon gear lying around I'll venture into writing a bit about these things.

The gear I used in Greece

Now, since back then I have owned & used most types of gear out there... Even when I worked hard on working in spartan, minimal ways I kept learning & testing, like when I used Leicas in the mid to late nineties.

Photography is one of those fields where it can be hard to keep your focus on the creative, where the tools and everything around them tend to get in the way of producing results.

Which is why I boiled my camera in 94, but that is another story for later! 😁

FM with old 35-105

I have two old FM's. I cannot quite remember where I got all of the gear, but I know that one of them came from a guy running an engraving workshop behind the studio when I was still running the agency.

His tiny hole in the wall was one of the last real, independent businesses that were left in what is now a 15 minute city, the city in which I born is more or less gone...

Anyway, I got that with the old 35-105/3.5-4.5 zoom for nothing, along with the 20mm 3.5 which I dented right before these pictures, for basically nothing. My business partner did the bidding, that helped haha!

I know I got the old 180mm 2.8 from 1970 from the US, in the background to the left. The shipping company did not add the VAT and customs fees, neither did any official entities send me any bills, what I got was a bill from some weird, third party, globalist entity.

Which is why I never paid that haha, and also why I enjoy owning the 180!

Backside with return handle

One of the FM's has a return handle that is messed up. That reminds me of doing rough things like music photography in the early nineties, having those dinged and twisted, also frantically rewinding, reloading & hoping nothing really spectactular happened right then!

Which is why carrying at least 2 cameras was a thing, either a backup that might have some other function, or ideally two identical ones.

Why? Well when you use a tool professionally you need the tool to work, always, in a consistent way that never changes.

180mm, 50mm, 16mm, and the newly dented 20mm...

I really like Nikon, especially since its sturdy. I know I can hammer nails with the FM's if I have to, and expect them to work for years to come!

One of them has started misfiring in the heat, though, but I recon I can open it up & simply loosen up and replace the oil in the timing gears myself one of these days. Will post from that!

My problem with Nikon is that I did build extremely strong reflexes on Canon, and then later on Leica. Which means that the focus ring rotation is hard-wired into my nervous system. It is literally impossible for me to turn that around, at least while working in a professional capacity...

Will I now try to do this? Maybe! Doing what I do online now there is no need to get everything spot on at each shoot, and also I finally got used to full autofocus on Fujifilm.

The 16mm/2.8 fisheye

Speaking of camera gear this was a surprise. When the agency and my other 2-3 companies came to a grinding halt with the whole 2020 debacle and insane shutdowns I ended up with this one on my hand.

I would never have bought this one for my own use, so it has been interesting to test out this very niche thing for a while!

Seeing that I can often get some interesting takes in cramped spaces while traveling I'm pondering on keeping it...

The D700

A major thing with all of this is that Nikon & old Nikkor lenses are stellar tools for all round photography where you want to combine both analog and digital. All of the lenses work well with the old D700, and I can just chuck an old FM and some rolls in the checked in luggage if I want that backup.

Also I can easily use them with my Fujifilm gear, I'll get consistent rotation for both aperture & focus if I set it that way!

Through all these years I've had it all, Pentax, Canon, Leica, Nikon, Mamiya, Fujifilm, Sony/Minolta Alpha, 4x5 gear, scanners, printers, a whole studio and whatnot... But all I need to create should always be even less than this, all fitting in a smaller bag for travel 🙂

And now I see that I've done what I recommend everyone not to do haha, which is focus too much on the tools...

Oh well, this is a least some content for here on Hive! And maybe it can help someone starting out, realizing that old, very sturdy camera gear can be used as reliable tools for creating good content!