Category: Photography

Bought a third hand used Nikon F4s today from a nice gentleman in Pasir Ris part of Singapore today.
Although the price is not that low compared to what I could get here in Malaysia for a battered F4s or even lower for an F4 without the MB21 battery pack, the winning bid in this case has an MF23 back attached to the F4. This turns the F4 into a machine that has a built in intervalometer, and you can do a lot of time related functions with it. Best of all, most special camera back can print dates and other stuff in the frame but the MF23 can print them BETWEEN frames. This way you dont get a time mark or date mark ruining the printed picture. Nice eh?
Continue reading “Nikon F4s is mine!!!!”

Was at the Camera Workshop in Peninsular Plaza Singapore today fooling with 3 Nikon F4s body. Quite a nice camera to hold, with the right heft, and a nice sound made by the shutter. The serial ranges from a 21XXXX to a 24XXXX and a 25XXXX and you can basically tell what the changes are comparing the 3 different generations of the F4. Tested it out with AFS lens and its true that there is forward compatibility built into the F4 (first introduced in the late 80s).

Its my first day here in Singapore for the Chinese New Year and I’ve already bought almost all the stuff I need for developing my own B&W film. Cathay in Peninsular ran out of developnig tanks and they told me that they don’t expect to have anymore coming in anytime soon, maybe never. Managed to get a cheaper plastic tank at Ruby Photo across the road, and some Kodak TMax developing liquid and assortment of other stop bath, fixers. Generally, I’ll say that the setup I’ll use is rather amateurish, but that’s ok with me. Still doing it for the first time. Continue reading “Peninsular Plaza Singapore”

Did some prints from the D70 recently, and with the size of the picture saved from the D70 at full resolution, you’re just about able to do a 8×12″ picture at exactly 250dpi. At least that’s the requirement from my neighbourhood photo developer . The output is not too bad, but I have a shot that looked a little soft but that’s probably because of the kit lens on the D70 at 18mm. The second shot was crisp and taken with the Nikkor 80-200mm f2.8. One day I’ll try and blow it up or do crops, and see if a picture developped with less than 250dpi will have quality compromises.

With my D70 out of action now, I’m going back to film. Stocked my dry cabinet up with 5 rolls of Kodak TX400 B&W films.
Actually thinking about learning how to develop my own films now that digital is everywhere and you dont know when the last B&W developing studio is going to switch to just printing out digital files. Not sure if they sell the chemicals here in Kuala Lumpur, but will go stock up some when I’m in Singapore soon.

There are some nice websites that teaches the basics of B&W film developing… and I thikn I will need to buy myself a timer and a thermometer soon.

I’ve been dabbling in my old mothballed F801s ever since I’ve been crippled with the D70 bring service for the next few weeks.
Tried to use up all the B&W films I’ve been accumulating… and just realised that there’s actually something alluring about using film. I’ve tried to fool around with the digital files in Photoshop to get the same grain effect of a ISO1600 film, but just can’t get it. Not yet anyways.
Continue reading “Back to Basics”

One of the small annoyance I find irritating with digital SLR is the presence of dust on the CCD sensors. Lets face it, the lens gets changed quite often, and every time you do it, some small particle gets into the chamber and then next time you snap the combination of the mirror going up and the charged CCD attracts dusts to the CCD.
I took some long exposure shots last night, and noticed that there’s a rather large streak of blurred section of the image. Right after that I did a mirror lockup and saw an obvious piece of fibre on the CCD. Arrggghhh!!!

Bought a step up ring the last weekend in Singapore and finally got to putting my Hoya IR filter on the 50mm prime lens. The first comment about the combination is that the pictures dont seem to be well focussed. This is by using the autofocus function in the camera. I tried to override using manual and adjust the focus and it just doesn’t help when the lens don’t come with a IR focus distance markers silkscreened onto it. Tried to shoot at f16 or more and it was slightly better.
Didn’t get this focussing problem with the kit lens 18-70mm DX lens. Will test aroung with it now that I’m going to spend the whole week at home…

The D70 has clocked more than 1000 shots today. Here’s a sample of the photo after modification. It happened to be an infrared shot of the clouds on this fine Sunday.

After realizing that my SB22 flash doesnt work with the D70 anymore with TTL functions, I went out to get the Nikon SB800 yesterday. Had the choice between the SB600 and SB800 and the SB800 was 50% more than the SB600. Managed to negotiate a 50/50 deal with the shop, where I pay 50% of the amount of the flash in cash and the rest with my credit card. That for the same price as cash price. Continue reading “SB800 Flash”