My Last Analog Photo Gear

As mentioned in my previous post, the accident with my first SLR camera gave me the chance to start from scratch. So I spent some time thinking carefully about all the limitations that I experienced with my previous gear, and how to avoid such restrictions with my next camera - and naturally I ended up buying way too much equipment - some of it I later sold without ever having used it! Here's my recollection of considerations that I took into account, back in 1982:

• I was focusing on color slides - this implied that pictures should look fine "as is": there is no easy way to do cropping on a slide: at the wide angle end, one can typically work with fixed focal lengths and adjust the picture composition by taking a couple steps - at the narrow angle end (70 mm focal length and beyond) this is often not practicable, so I wanted a tele-zoom lens
• I was frequently taking pictures inside buildings, or in streets and narrow locations, etc., so I also wanted to expand to focal lengths below 50 mm
• Inside buildings, the lighting is usually critical (this was the time of analog film, so at 400 ASA one would already start getting grainy pictures), so I wanted the focal lengths at 50 mm and below with large (but still affordable) apertures
• For macro photography I wanted to add extension rings again - but automatic ones, if possible, as this makes macro photography so much easier.
• One thing I had been missing with the Topcon was flexibility with the viewfinder: the preferred viewfinder screen depends on the type of lens attached (no autofocus at that time!), e.g.: for macro photography one wanted a clear viewfinder, for low light conditions a fresnel lens with focusing aid is better, and for architecture photography I was often missing a grid that helps getting the photo straight (again, there is only so much straightening one can to while framing a slide!)
• And of course I was looking for a camera body (and Nikon somehow appeared to be the obvious choice to me) that wold give me all this flexibility ....

So, here's what I bought, back in fall 1982: I took the Nikon F3 - their top-of-the-range camera at that time, so I was sure I would not be disappointed — and here's the additional gear that filled up my Tenba photo bag:

• 24 mm f/2, 35 mm f/1.4, and 50 mm f/1.4 fixed focal length lenses
• 80 - 200 mm f/4 Telezoom lens
• Nikon flash SB-16A
• a leather enclosure that I never used (always had the camera in a bag)
• additional viewfinder screens C, G2, G3, and R - the only one I ended up using is "R" (Grid)
• a set of automatic extension rings
• filters & other, small stuff

And — so you might ask — was I happy with all this equipment? Well, yes, in that I certainly did not have any of the limitations that I experienced with my previous SLR. Over about 20 years I took some 3000 pictures with it (gross under-use for professional equipment that is built for 100'000+ exposures!), and as far as I can tell (in my own measures), the number of good shots was exceptional (i.e., I typically didn't discard many slides) — but of course not all accessories turned out as useful as anticipated, plus ...

• time went on, of course, and not too long after my purchase, cameras with autofocus started appearing — and there I was with all my lenses with manual focusing ...
• for me as a non-professional photographer, a single viewfinder screen ("R", with the grid) would have been sufficient;
• the most popular lenses were the 80 - 200 mm f/4 telezoom and the 35 mm f/1.4; I often found pictures from the 50 mm lens "boring", "ordinary" - and also the 24 mm f/2 wasn't used very heavily. It was OK for architecture and in buildings, but for landscape, pictures often had a "flat" appearance;
• I should have switched to the high-eyepoint viewfinder when that became available it's just easier to work with;
• I ended up doing far less macro photography than anticipated. Actually, I could cover most of my "close-up" needs by using the telezoom at a focal length of 200 mm at its minimum distance of 1.2 m

For the first 10 years, I used it quite often (in my own measures) - it served me well on our vacation trips, and during all the excursions we made during the 6.5 years that we lived in Germany, as well as of course places near where we live now, such as this autumn / evening picture from the Pfäffikersee near Zurich:

A hazy autumn afternoon on lake Pfäffikon / ZH
Image scanned from color slide, using a Nikon Super CoolScan 5000 ED slide scanner, 4000 dpi

1993 — 1995 the camera remained unused — I was probably too busy establishing myself in my home office; I resumed photography in 1996 and used the camera till summer 2002. By that time our kids had digicams, Lea had used a Fuji APS camera for a while (until somebody lost it in London, or had it stolen ... ), but clearly, I now saw that for me the era of analog photography was over. In 2007 / 2008 I sent in the body for a revision (the electronics was broken, and apparently it also had a light leak), then I auctioned out all of the above gear. Back in 1982 I had payed some CHF 5500 for the equipment, after 25 years it returned some CHF 1500 — the body alone still was worth 37% of the purchasing price (ignoring currency depreciation).

Also this camera story ends with an anecdote (this time without accident / bloodshed!), indicating how much I had lost interest in analog photography in the end: when I was about to sell the F3 and wanted to turn it in for repair in 2007, I realized that the exposure counter indicated 35 photos: I turned the rewind handle - and indeed there was still a film in the camera, with pictures taken 5 years earlier, up in Northern Finland!! I sent in the film for development, and — as expected — I received a set of color slides with awfully degraded photos; I spent a couple hours in attempts to restore the original colors — so far (I'll give it another try) the result is very modest ...

My First SLR Camera

In 1971, in my third year at high school, our chemistry teacher expanded his course into applied sciences: his facilities included a complete dark chamber for film development & for making paper copies - and so we also received some classes in photography. We took photos during excursions, using whatever cameras people could lay their hand on - a wide range of cheap viewfinder cameras to SLRs, from no-name models up to Minoltas and Leica. That was the point where I found that my Paxette 35 was no longer adequate. and so I asked the class mate with the most photo experience to help me find a better tool.  The well-known brands such as Minolta, Konica, Pentax, let alone top brands such as Nikon were not within my financial possibilities — but after some comparison I ended up buying a Topcon RE-2. This was a handy tool that served me quite well for over 11 years (given my modest ambitions & needs): it featured shutter speeds of 1 sec .. 1/1000, and a fixed focal length RE Auto-Topcor lens, 58 mm / f/1.8 .. 22 (minimum distance 45 cm). I never had additional lenses, but did eventually buy a set of extension rings for macro photography.

For me as a hobby photographer, this probably was just the right tool. At home I typically used b&w film, while on vacation I normally used Kodak Ektachrome 200 or 400 for color slides. Over the 11 years that I used it, I generated over 3000 color slides and filled dozens of b&w film rolls. Sure, it had its limitations - but it worked — up to our honeymoon trip to Southern Germany and Austria, where I took over 500 photos (that was a fair number in the age of analog film!). Actually, it later turned out that during the second half of the trip the metering was starting to degrade — but that wasn't the killer for this camera:

The killer was — the photographer! We had visited Linz, Wilhering and Stadl Paura, then we drove up to Passau, where we stayed for two nights before finishing off the trip by paying a visit to St.Florian. We had just arrived in Passau and had parked our car downtown, in a parking lot. There was a second, lower part of the parking lot that led to the nearby street or passage. Rather than taking the regular exit from the parking, I decided to jump / run down the little, 2 - 3 m bushy slope, down into the lower part of the parking lot, taking a shortcut. Well, I did not see the green, coated wire that was spanning the bottom rim of the entire slope, some 20 - 30 cm above ground ... even if I had seen the wire in the end — I was at full speed, too late to stop, so I stumbled over the wire and (to Lea's dismay) fell flat on my face, or rather, my forearms. Luckily, despite the terrible sound I did not break any bones, I just had a couple bruises. What probably saved me from bigger damage was the fact that in my left hand I was carrying my Topcon, by its shoulder strap. Once I was falling, I swung the left arm over my head, blasting the camera onto the floor (that was the source of the sound!). It hit the ground on the backside: the lens was still intact (to this day I use it as a magnifying glass), though the bajonet had a dent. The camera body was destroyed beyond repair. Thanks to the leather enclosure, I managed to rewind and take out the film, mostly without exposing it to the bright, full sunligh — there were still a few pictures on it that I could restore! The wrecked body later served as a toy "camera" for Deborah when she was 3 to 4 years old, until I discarded it -

Image scanned from color slide, using a Nikon Super CoolScan 5000 ED slide scanner, 4000 dpi

Image scanned from color slide, using a Nikon Super CoolScan 5000 ED slide scanner, 4000 dpi

Image scanned from color slide, using a Nikon Super CoolScan 5000 ED slide scanner, 4000 dpi

I was lucky in the end: the damage was negligible (excepting the camera, of course), I did not need the camera in St.Florian, as I already had a collection of pictures of that place from an earlier trip — and now I had a good reason (and a slightly bigger budget) to buy the camera of my dreams ...