Hello all,
I visited a friend in Amsterdam yesterday who referred me to this forum.
I am a Nikon user ever since I bought my first camera in 1995. A Nikon FM. A camera made in the year I was born and which still works today. Actually, it is this Nikon FM I am talking about:
DSC_2207 by
b j, on Flickr
So, ever since I have been a big Nikon fan. But not such that I never trested the waters and looked at what lies beyond Nikon-land. I owned a Canon EOS 5E which I sold soon after I bought it because I just could not get around the button layout. I owned a Bronica SQ which had some of the finest lenses I used to date. I tried Leica (although I never owned one) and a Voigtlander Bessa. Played around with a Cambo 4x5 as well for a few years. Mostly with Rodenstock and Schneider lenses.
When digital photography emerged big in the early 2000's I owned a Nikon FM and FM2 with a small selection of Ai and Ai-S lenses. I bought a D70s and still used the Ai and Ai-S lenses even without on-camera light metering. Instead I relied on my old Minolta IVf which also still serves me well today.
After a while of playing with the D70s and a bit of a photography hiatus (it just wasn't the same without wet darkroom and similar emotions) I upgraded to the D200 and rediscovered a love for photography. I soon sold the D200 and bought a D300 and after a while a good used D3 which I still use now.
In the meanwhile I also bought a few more more manual focus Nikkors. The Nikkors of the 60's and 70's really got my motivation for photography up where it used to be back in my first days of photography.
Something else that really helped me along in the more technical aspects of my photography and the eager to learn more about developing digital photos using various tools was meeting my girlfriend who is also an avid and most talented photographer. I introduced her into film photography and manual focus lenses while at the same time she helped me take an interest on editing photos to find back to the results I knew from film but never got with the D70 or D200 (which is odd because the D200 is a very capable camera and I sometimes regret selling it)
DSC_5777-Edit-Edit by
b j, on Flickr
So, what brought me here? The advise of a fellow Nikon collector who likes the 60's and 70's Nikkors really.
I do hope to find a few nice conversations here in which I can take part and I also hope to find more inspiration (and maybe a reason to finally adapt a medium format lens to the D3. Something I have been trying to talk myself out of for almost 5 years now)
Below are some of my more recent photographs.
Taken with D3 and 28mm f3,5 PC Nikkor
DSC_7425-Edit by
b j, on Flickr
D3 and 16mm f3,5 fish eye Nikkor
DSC_6456-Edit by
b j, on Flickr
D3 and 5cm f2 Nikkor-S
5cmf2nkjN-S by
b j, on Flickr
D3 and 55mm f1,2 Nikkor-S.C
DSC_4882 by
b j, on Flickr
So, after breaking all forum rules and such I hope to find a few likeminded photographers or those who can convince me I'm all wrong and AF is where the money lies
