Nikonf100

The big tree. One of the few old yellowwood trees that survived the clear cutting. There’s been a lot of replanting and preservation to try to undo the damage of colonial exploitation of resources - the same kind of exploitation still going on full-tilt in Central Africa. This is another one from my expired film test in Knysna back in September with @sophdex and Jinty and Jinty’s wonderful kids. This was also the first real test of using the F100 with the modern 24-120 stabilised lens - getting sharp results at 1/15th of a second handheld. There are only a handful of Nikon film cameras that can use stabilised lenses. Quite a few Canons though, I believe.

from our holiday in Knysna with @ezlemoen (pictured dispensing wisdom) and @sophdex

It’s been a while since I shot film. Processes for sharing them have changed and I’ve forgotten some things. So I’m doing a little testing. Despite everything, when I have a perfect exposure (1/500th at f6.3 for the sun) and a stabilised lens, and boost the sharpness and balance the colour, the results are good even from a flatbed scanner with a very, very expired film. So I’m eager to see the results using a digital camera copy with a new film. ...

I ran a roll of colour negative film through the F100 mainly to check if it was leaving tramlines on the film as this camera has sometimes done. It passed the test so I’m loading up the queen of all colour films, Fujichrome Velvia 50 which, know it or not, you saw splashed across magazines throughout the 90s. I found this precious roll in the fridge (expired 2009) and, since I’ve discovered there’s a place processing slide film in Cape Town, wanted to shoot it on the F100. The F100 came out in 1999 and can use Nikon’s most recent F-mount lenses, including those with image stabilisation for maximum sharpness - especially with a very slow, 50ISO film like this. A lot of young people may only think of film for producing images with character. But Velvia can theoretically out-resolve the highest resolution full-frame digital cameras and produce wild colour. ...

My old beast. Loaded up with a roll of ancient Fujicolor Superia 100 for the first time in more than ten years. This was the first camera I actually bought rather than got as a hand-me-down. I hauled this heavy thing and 30 rolls of film around South and Southeast Asia in 2005 - well inside the digital era but before digital was good. I’ve discovered a few rolls of Velvia 50 and this is the perfect camera to shoot them on. But I need to first see if I’ve sorted the issue where the pressure plate was leaving tramlines down the film.

I don’t know why I started thinking about this picture. Tibetan monks in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, India, reading from old books in the Tibetan script. Maybe books that they smuggled out of Tibet after the Chinese takeover. One of the things that always put me off was a very unfortunate tendency by my Nikon F100 to leave a scratch across the film - a slender straight black line caused by the film being pulled across some piece of grit on the pressure plate. I can get rid of it with a bit of work, but I’d always just move on. Now it maybe seems like part of the nostalgia for these pictures.