A Nikon FE2…or two

I used my coworker’s camera for my first and third rolls of film, but even though my coworker wasn’t in a rush to get her camera back, I knew I had to get my own. Someone gave me advice and recommended that I get something like a used Nikkormat/Nikon EL, EL2, FE, or FE2 because of their build quality and their use of a match needle. Ridiculously enough, I bought two – one from craigslist and the other from ebay. I originally planned to sell one of them, but I haven’t really gotten around to it. So for now, I’ve got double the fun.

There is a minor problem with a camera as old as the FE2. The seals turn to mush. Thankfully, you can buy seal kits on ebay that make it relatively easy to change them yourself.

I first noticed the mirror foam falling apart on the black one, so that’s the one I started with.

This light seal on the film door was a sticky mess.

After removing the door from the body, I applied an adhesive removal solvent on the old seal.

I then used one of the bamboo tools provided in the kit to scrape off the old seal.

The new seal applied on the door on the left and an old seal on the door on the right. The other door was from the silver FE2.

Another view of the replaced seal along with another seal that was replaced underneath the tab that resets the film counter.

The new seals fitted onto the left side of the film door.

The bamboo tool was used again to scrape out the sticky mess that used to be the old foam seals that run in the grooves on the top and bottom of the film door opening.

Once cleaned out, the new foam seals provided in the kit were guided into place.

I used the bamboo tool to carefully set the new foam seal into place. The seals were a little longer than the grooves they were being put into and needed to be cut to length. There is no need to pull on the foam and stretch it’s length since there is more than enough of it provided in the kit.

I did the same for the groove on the bottom.

A view of the new seals in their place and cut to length. In this photo you can also see the titanium honeycomb shutter which allowed the FE2 to acheive a 1/4000 sec shutter speed. That was remarkable in it’s time.

Be careful when removing the old foam stuck to the mirror. I’ve read that the mirror scratches very easily. To remove the foam from the area the mirror slaps against, I turned the camera with the lens opening face down, and scraped it out with the provided blade. Keeping the lens opening face down made working uncomfortable, but it kept the bits of foam from falling into the camera body.

The instructions recommended licking the adhesive on the new foam to help make it easier to position it. Once that was done, the camera was good to go.

Then it was the silver one’s turn. What’s wrong with this picture?

So far, I’ve just changed the mirror foam. It’s been working fine since the other seals weren’t as bad as they were in the black FE2. I do plan on going in and changing everything else in the near future though. The process is simple but time consuming, but fortunately both Nikons have been working flawlessly since.

How do I like the FE2? I think it suits my needs as a student perfectly. It’s solidly built with a metal body that provides enough weight to help keep it steady. It’s simple to use with only a dial for shutter speeds and an aperture ring on the lens. It also has an aperture priority setting, which I admit to using quite often. And yes, that match needle has come in handy with it’s visual representation of recommended exposure values.

The Light to Record a Recording of Light

I’m still trying to figure out the best way to take pictures of mounted prints. White balance is an issue for me. These attempts were done with a Canon SD200 outdoors in open shade, but you can notice some distracting glare. The green glare in the lower right is coming from a plant a couple feet away. Still, it seems a little better than what I posted before.

First Enlargements

Also due on October 13, 2 mounted and spotted enlargements. Our instructor had two main reasons for us to mount our work. One was that it would make it easier for the class to see them for the critiques. The other was that he wanted us to treat them as works of art. We would be dry mounting our prints using heat sensitive tissue. The bookstore had some, but I quickly discovered that Freestyle Photographic Supplies had their Arista brand mounting tissue for less. We also needed mounting boards that were white on both sides. Thankfully, we wouldn’t need museum board or anything of that nature at this level. In fact, I was trying to find the cheapest boards I could find. Surprisingly, that cheapest source for 11×14 mounting boards happened to be Chabot’s bookstore with a cost of $1.29. Purchasing online would cost more because of extra shipping charges, and Faultline’s cheapest stuff was still more expensive. We were also told that one way to save money would be to buy 28×44″ boards and just cut them. I’ll have to try that sometime.

My first enlargement was of a creek and levee near my home. I think it was taken in the bright early afternoon sun. I made a few printing attempts with this one, and in one of them I remember trying to burn in the sky. Unfortunately, I messed up on my first mounting attempt. Even though our instructor reminded us that resin coated paper has a low melting point around 200 degrees, and that we should always check the temperature of the press and tacking iron, I still ended up melting a part of the print. Maybe I was holding the tacking iron in the same place too long, or maybe it was simply too hot, but I ended up with a shiny spot right in the middle of the print. I was tempted to just mount that print anyway, but decided to start over.

My second enlargement was of the outside of what I think is the Chabot College Performing Arts Center. This was taken in the later afternoon. I only made one enlargement and just mounted it along with the other print. I did not bother to spot either print.

During the classroom critique, the instructor said that they were both good, but that the first one could have used a little more contrast. For the second, he said he generally tells students to avoid taking pictures on campus because everything is too neat and manicured. Of the two, he preferred the wilder look of the first print. I got A’s for both prints, but he told us before that he would grade progressively harder as the class went along.

Note: I’m still trying to figure out the best way to post mounted prints. These were taken under poor lighting, and I’m still not sure how to best deal with setting the white balance on the Canon SD200 I took these with.

Contrast Filters

Originally, we were supposed to have two mounted and spotted enlargements ready on September 29. We were also supposed to turn in 6 small prints – all from the same negative – using filters 0,1,2,3,4, and 5. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but our instructor became ill for over a week around this time, so the due date was pushed back to October 13. I’ll cover the enlargements in another post even though they were due the same time as this filters assignment.

I needed an assignment like this because I wanted to see what kind of effect changing the contrast filters had on the prints. For this assignment, I used an 80mm lens on the enlarger to fit the whole image on smaller 4×5″ sheets. In these scans, the top left is a 0 filter. 1 is on the top right, 2 is on the bottom left, and 3 is on the bottom right. For all of these, I kept the exposure time the same. Looking back at them now, I think I could have done a better job with printing them, but I was just satisfying the requirements at the time. Originally, I didn’t increase the exposure time enough for my prints using filters 4 and 5, so I had to go back and reprint them. That explains why my #5 filter example is positioned a little differently. When I got these back, my instructor wrote “Good” on the back of the number 5 filter example.

For reference, these prints were made on the same Ilford RC paper I would use the whole semester. The contrast filters used in the enlargers were also Ilford brand.

Shoot a Roll, But With What Camera?

After our photograms were turned in, our class moved onto the next assignment. Develop at least one roll of film, any subject. A contact sheet would be due on September 15th. I already purchased a box of Ilford MGIV RC paper from Faultline Photographics for the previous assignment. While I was there, I also picked up a bottle of Edwal FG7 developer. The only thing was, what camera would I use?

Thankfully my coworker saved the day. She had a Pentax ZX-60 that “no one was using.” I knew I wanted to eventually get a camera of my own, but I needed something as soon as possible. She brought it to work the next day and gave me a quick explanation which went right over my head. “Press this button and roll the dial to go to Av and Tv modes.” Huh? I figured I’d make sense of it all in due time so I thanked her and went with some friends to Las Vegas that weekend where I went on to take a whopping four pictures.

Before I started, 36 exposures didn’t seem like much at all. In practice though, for me, it was a different story. I had no idea what to take pictures of. After 20 frames of nonsense, I ended up going to a local park and playing with the settings to kill off the roll. Again, I didn’t know what the settings meant. I just changed them and pressed the button. Also, strangely enough, I never used the autofocus on that ZX-60. I ended up buying fresh batteries for my coworker anyway, but at the time I really wanted to avoid killing the old batteries that were already in there.

In the end, what I got was one of the ugliest contact sheets ever. Strike one. My instructor looked at it, asked if it was Las Vegas in the pictures, and then expressed his distaste for the city. Oops, strike two. When the contact sheets were actually due, I had another using a 24 exposure roll of Kodak Tri-X. Looking at the two contact sheets, he did say that there were some interesting pictures, but that most looked flat, though that isn’t really a big deal for contact sheets. Strike three…kind of. The good news was that I was at least able to develop my film without any real problems. Apparently some other students weren’t so lucky.

The First Assignment: Photograms

Our photograms were due on Sept 1, 2009. As our first assignment in the introductory Photo 50 class, it made perfect sense. You place items on top of the photo enlarging paper and become familiar with how to use an enlarger and the chemicals used in the development process. Our instructor used some small stemmed beverage glasses and tulle for a quick example. A lot of students ended up using flowers and plants. I remember trying straws and plastic bubble packaging and not liking my results.

Eventually, I settled on the items you see in these test strips.

The following are scans of what I ended up composing on Ilford MGIV RC paper.

For this one, I paper clipped the stalks into bunches to keep some kind of order. Without the paper clips, it just looked like a mess.

This was my first attempt with the cassette tapes…

…and this was my second. One of my classmates actually brought cassette tapes the same day I did, and even went so far as to pull the tape out which looked pretty interesting.

This one using eyewear was a last minute decision. I knew I had sunglasses and safety goggles, so I gathered up anything else I could find right before heading out the door that day.

When I showed them all to my instructor, he said they were all good, but the first two were a little plain. The third he said was good, but he seemed to like the fourth the most. One of its strengths was the use of repetition which he described as a common artistic element. So, while we could have turned in as many as we wanted so that he would give us a grade based on the best one, I just turned in the fourth.

Beyond The Straight Print

My instructor and classmates are having a student show at Faultline Photographics in Hayward. Check it out if you have a chance.

Intro

I’d been interested in photography for a long time, but I knew almost nothing about it. So last fall, after years of telling myself “someday”, I decided to enroll in an introductory black and white film class. I pitched the idea of taking it to a few friends, but in the end, I took the class by myself.

This will really be for myself to track my own development – or lack thereof. If you’ve stumbled across it, welcome.