The stuff of dreams

Photograph in some capacity or other was always a thing with me from 127 mini roll film cameras, 120 6x6 frame models I had in as a child to the ill-fated Kodak Disc camera to a Vivitar 35mm compact camera that focused itself and even fed the film through.

Then in the mid 1990's came the Olympus full blown system cameras, the OM4 especially with a crateful of lenses, T32 flash, Winder 2 for eating film in seconds and a stash of Practical Photography  and Photo Techniques magazines, a fair few lurk in the spare room in a box.

While many put their trust in auto focusing and many program modes I was winding film on, focusing by hand and learning metering techniques.

It's fair to say many were more impressed with my pictures than what they'd achieved with those plastic and silicon wonder cameras and really that's where things stayed until I got the Nikon D3500 in 2019 because better results than a compact digital camera for blogs was more what I was needed.

As we entered the 2000's I was more into having films scanned and seeing support for the Olympus OM System drifting away in a radically different world I often thought of a "last film camera system" as while elements of the OM4 were superb such as the spot metering and exposure memory the fastest shutter speed was 1/2000th of a second and the fastest speed I could with flash was a miserly 1/60th which wasn't so go good for fill-in flash and doing multiple exposures was messy.

Thus for many a year I coveted what in many was a much simplier camera that could use a good number of the auto focus lenses that were easier to get and often had modern internal designs.

The Nikon FM2n that originally came out in this form in 1982 was it, with a precision  mechanically controlled shutter that went up to 1/4000th of second but a shutter that could work with flash up to 1/250th of second which was more usable.

Being mechanical, it only needed a couple of LR or SR44 batteries for the meter indicator showing if needed less or more exposure even if that was centre-weighted which I was used to and could predict any errors.

The top plate was delightfully fuss free and overall ergonomics were fantastic - it would just let you get on with things with the eyepiece held to your eye with not one menu tree to explore.

Talking of eye pieces it took 19mm circle correction lenses for those of us who struggle with things in the distance and this variable one just screws in making focusing easy.

Back then there was much arguing in camera clubs and magazines about the best sorts of lenses to use I decided as this was "for best" we'd go with a 50mm so-called standard lens as I found the quality was a bit better and as they had wider apertures than most standard zooms you could more easily get backgrounds out of focus which helps.

I feel lost without that 50.

This example was from 1982, a little more plastic than the earliest but a great performer.

I always had a spare Tamron 28mm wide angle lens as it was razor sharp and light, ideal for scenic or whole buildings.

For when I wanted a telephoto I have bear in mind one major thing that doesn't apply as much with digital cameras - the total weight of a camera and lens needs to be below when my hands shake otherwise I'd be totally restricted to photographing with a tripod which isn't always the most practical.

Better quality telezooms that equal single length telephoto lenses in quality and lens speed are both very expensive and very heavy - too heavy for me - so I decided I would compromise with a slightly slower 135mm (F3.5) telephoto as it's things within that range I tend to use use for telephoto work and they tend to be the lightest models.

The loss of half a "F stop" isn't that noticeable in practice 

Being of simpler construction often in more difficult conditions the image quality can be better with less reflectance internally.

That for decades that dream lived  on as just that but soon for one last time I'll have that as a new (to me) film camera and accessories, the last ever one I'll need skewed to my needs to use purely for fun.

That's what I tend to miss the most in the digital era.