Fun with "Obsolete" Nikons

[dave.gt]

With the news that the Z7 is likely now discontinued it would seem that I now shoot with an obsolete camera and can join this thread and post my obsolete images!

Wow… less than 4 years and now discontinued.

 

[dave.gt]

Forty years ago, my camera was making images like this:

 

[dave.gt]

Hmmm… I wonder how long “obsolete” batteries will be around. The price if batteries on contemporary cameras is already ridiculous.

I am already very unhappy with buying new replacement batteries for $100-$200/ea.

Simple math: two batteries per camera x the # of cameras = A lot of money! And I have a lot of older digital cameras.

My M3…, I miss it. But the button batteries in my old manual focus cameras seem to last many years.

 

[Jorgen Udvang]

Hmmm… I wonder how long “obsolete” batteries will be around. The price if batteries on contemporary cameras is already ridiculous.

I am already very unhappy with buying new replacement batteries for $100-$200/ea.

Simple math: two batteries per camera x the # of cameras = A lot of money! And I have a lot of older digital cameras.

My M3…, I miss it. But the button batteries in my old manual focus cameras seem to last many years.

I bought replacement batteries for my D2Xs from Durapro Official Store at AliExpress a couple of years ago. They are currently $19.70 a piece, and they work very well.

29.58C$ 23% OFF|1pc 3200mah En-el4 En El4 En-el4a Enel4a Rechargeable Battery For Nikon D2h D2hs D2x D2xs D3 D3s F6 Mh-21 Cameras - Digital Batteries - AliExpress

Smarter Shopping, Better Living! Aliexpress.com

www.aliexpress.com

 

[dave.gt]

I bought replacement batteries for my D2Xs from Durapro Official Store at AliExpress a couple of years ago. They are currently $19.70 a piece, and they work very well.

29.58C$ 23% OFF|1pc 3200mah En-el4 En El4 En-el4a Enel4a Rechargeable Battery For Nikon D2h D2hs D2x D2xs D3 D3s F6 Mh-21 Cameras - Digital Batteries - AliExpress

Smarter Shopping, Better Living! Aliexpress.com

www.aliexpress.com

Ah! That is great to know!! I picked some inexpensive batteries for the Nikon E950 and 995 that seem to be ok for now.

The Leica X1 batteries are not cheap, nor was the now departed H5, or the Leica S 006.

Thank you for the D2X tip, I will be shooting it a lot over the coming year!

 

[nathantw]

D700, 24mm f/1.4G @ f/1.4, ISO 800

 

[dave.gt]

In the meantime, it is Fall 2022! Maybe a couple of weeks early officially…

So, I am now geared up for the season all the way through December.

First, I have decided to shoot picnic outings and the Octoberfest festival in Helen with Kodak 250D using the excellent Nikon F80 and 50/1.8 G.



Then in October, I will be shooting the fresh Velvia 50 with the Nikon F100 and 35-70/2.8 lens.

After that, I have to decide which color films and which BW films I want to use.

Life is good!

 

[dave.gt]

Ahhh… the D2x! I almost forgot that I have many images I need to edit and process. I will get to that soon before the images become “obsolete “.

I have had too much fun with the craft of photography using my obsolete FTN and F100 with various films and developers.

Nikon F100, 35-70mm/2.8
Kodak TMax, Rodinal:

Nikkormat FTN, 50mm/1.8
Eastman 5222 Double X, Ilford DD-X:




D2x images coming soon.

 

[dave.gt]

This past Spring I was having fun photographing, well… springs.

Using different cameras and formats, it was amusing to see the differences in each one.

Here is a comparison… one of many matchups:

Nikon D2x, 50/1.8 G:


Nikon F100, 35-70mm /2.8
Kodak TMax100, Rodinal:

 

[dave.gt]

The interesting thing is how many different looks one can get just by changing film and even more so by changing to a different lens. (And of course the time of day, lighting, and much more have a great effect on the final image of a static object.)

it is easy to forget the profound differences let alone subtleties in the final results when I just shoot and go, frequently not returning to the same subject.

Nikkormat FTN, 50/1.8
Acros II 100, Rodinal

 

[dave.gt]

It is definitely Fall weather here with a low this week of 1°C here this morning and leaves are just reaching their peak color.

I will be shooting the F80 with Kodak cinematic film this week. Looking forward to that! For color, in digital format, I will shoot a few with the Leica and a lot with the D2x.

That reminds me, not too long ago how mirrorless Nikons were soooo small compared to DSLRs. LOL… I will stick with the cameras I have, thank you.

In fact, I will be shooting slide film with the F100 and my FE2 next week through the holidays.

So, enjoy the Fall Y’all!!!

Nikon D2x

 

[MGrayson]

It is definitely Fall weather here with a low this week of 1°C here this morning and leaves are just reaching their peak color.

I will be shooting the F80 with Kodak cinematic film this week. Looking forward to that! For color, in digital format, I will shoot a few with the Leica and a lot with the D2x.

That reminds me, not too long ago how mirrorless Nikons were soooo small compared to DSLRs. LOL… I will stick with the cameras I have, thank you.

In fact, I will be shooting slide film with the F100 and my FE2 next week through the holidays.

So, enjoy the Fall Y’all!!!

Nikon D2x
View attachment 197611

View attachment 197612

View attachment 197613

That leaf drives a fancy car… lovely colors, Dave!

 

[Godfrey]

Hmm, batteries. Time for a review ...

• The digital Leica CL uses the same battery as a couple of Panasonics. I bought three for $25... with a charger!
• The M10 Monochrom uses the same (rather pricey) battery as all the other M10s ... means that if I want a color M, I'll look for an M10-R. It's a great battery, however, and the camera operates for a very very long time on a charge. I expect it will be available for a long time to come...
• The Light L16 battery is built in, not user changeable. When it dies, the camera dies—it's been end-of-life for years and totally unsupported now. I'll miss it ... but it's still working very nicely.
• The Olympus E-1 and E-M1 batteries are still easily found and not expensive.
• The M4-2 needs no battery; its optional Leicameter MR-4 PX-625 battery is available but getting hard to find.
• Batteries for my Sekonic L328 and L458 meters are easily available and pretty cheap. Last a long long time too.
• The Polaroid SX-70 and derivative cameras get a new battery every time you push in a new film cartridge. Not great for the environment, but I recycle them.
• The Minox 35GT-E, EC, and C use an easily available trio of silver oxide batteries with adapter, replacement for the original PX-27 mercury cell.
• The Rollei 35S uses a silver oxide replacement cell with adapter the same way ... and of course is 100% mechanical so you don't really need the battery.
• None of my other film cameras need batteries at this point.

I pulled out the plain-prism Nikon F the other day and did a bit of shutter exercise with it. Its selenium cell meter is dead, the body is working perfectly; the two lenses I have for it (55/3.5 Micro and 28/2) are working fine but their focusing helicoids are getting a bit gratchy feeling ... Both should be serviced and lubricated. But maybe I'll put a roll of film through the camera soon, before I send the lenses off for service.

So ... A classic photo with a classic Nikon camera ... made back in the day as I crossed the country on my BMW R75/5 with the Nikon FM.

Hot ... Always Hot! - Kansas 1984
Nikon FM + Nikkor 50mm f/1.8
Kodachrome 64​

enjoy!
G

 

[dave.gt]

Btw, I enjoy “crazy” light and colors, and I look for it constantly. I grew weary of banal snapshots long ago, so now I just shoot for my own pleasure and curiosity.

 

[dave.gt]

That leaf drives a fancy car… lovely colors, Dave!

Ha! The crazy colors from our red maple tree leaves are no more… the tree died early last year and it was removed last December. I really miss it and I am constantly reminded how short life is in all forms.

The “fancy car” used to collect the red maple leaves when it was parked in the driveway near the tree. But, the tree is gone and car is now immobile, needing a transmission rebuild after 28 years. It is no longer driven because of that.

 

[dave.gt]

Fall in the North Georgia Mountains!

Beautiful weather, leaf colors near their peak. Cloudless blue skies and clear days with a picnic basket in the trunk and no schedule or thoughts beyond the moment!

Sounds lovely doesn't it!

Photo opportunities should be abundant, with a picnic beside the lake in Hiawassee at the fairground. And a relaxing day, mist of all, would be just what the doctor ordered, right?

Well, life has as many twists and turns as any of the serpentine ribbons of asphalt that we followed through the mountains to simply enjoy the day (with a side visit to my bride’s cardiologist).

Metropolitan Atlanta. Need I say more?

 

[dave.gt]

Continuing… from the previous post…

Metropolitan Atlanta is a sprawling cancer. Metastasizing at a prodigious rate like a black hole somewhere lightyears away. It suffocates everything as it sucks in more people every year, and spits out used and abused people and things that litter the once pristine environment. It is an area that in 2002, surpassed 92 million miles driven annually (roughly the distance from the Earth to the Sun). The current madness of EV transportation will not change a thing for Atlanta’s future. Massive sprawl will continue at an even greater rate.

We live south of Atlanta in the fringe areas of white flight and see the same thing occurring on a smaller scale. While we can still head to the beaches in the panhandle region of Florida with no metropolitan areas to fight, going to our first love, The Great Smoky Mountains, or any area north of where we live has become a nightmare.

Not long ago in the 1990s, we could enjoy a day trip in our MG cars, or on a motorcycle (BMW or HD) to the Smoky Mountains. It was our annual trip for celebrating our honeymoon decades earlier. no longer is that possible because of urban sprawl and the associated impacts from that creeping cancer.

The last several drives to the mountains have been brutal. Traffic gridlock, road construction, wrecks, road rage and it seems every conceivable human nastiness one can imagine is an everyday occurrence throughout the day, every day.

We left at sunrise, arrived at the cardiologist office at 1pm (an hour and a half longer trip than was normal five years ago), and drove to the lake for a picnic. The extremely cold wind across the lake, was unusual, and it was brutal with 20 mph sustained winds, that froze my fingers as we tried to endure a short picnic. We packed it all in and decided to head home. No photos, no food. But we had a warm car to enjoy riding in and take in the colorful mountains for an hour.

Then, we hit the urban sprawl wall. It took us four hours to get into and through Atlanta so we could enjoy the relatively open road south of the airport. Yes, two hours of gridlocked traffic, which is apparently what people in Atlanta live with each day. Insane.

We made it home at 8pm. Beaten up but not defeated. Angry but grateful to be out of the grips of Atlanta.

Why do I bother to complain in this forum about the realities of living in such a place as Atlanta? It is simply to warn anyone that if you expect to enjoy casual trips anywhere here, it will be a disappointment at best. It is not worth the effort.

I can’t think of a time when I did not even stop for a few photographs. It has never happened. Sure, the light was harsh, and the people were harsher. But, the experience of a simple tour through the mountains being a nightmare became obvious the last time we went to the Smoky Mountains with gridlock because hundreds of people stopped and blocked the only road to get out of their cars and get snapshots of a bear. It was a harbinger of what we now see everywhere we go. Apparently, there has been a social/mental health change in general because of the pandemic which seems to be slowly retreating (but not vanishing).

Things have changed, as Bob Dylan wrote and so creatively expressed years ago. It will be difficult to enjoy photo trips again.

I guess we are destined to stay close to home.

Nikon D850
(apparently an obsolete camera now)

 

[Godfrey]

It's long been the case that if I wanted a pleasant drive in the car—or motorcycle—the best way to achieve that here in the SF Bay Area is to get up at 4am on a Sunday morning and head out of Santa Clara Valley. By the time most other people are awake, I'm off into rural country where traffic is minimal and I can enjoy both the road and the landscape. Otherwise, for near home toodling about, I just get on the bicycle: the pace of riding a bicycle even in urban traffic makes it much easier to find pleasant neighborhoods and byways to wander through.

I do have to train myself to make more photos when I'm cycling, or driving! I usually just hate to stop since I'm enjoying the cycling and driving too much.

G

 

[Jorgen Udvang]

Continuing… from the previous post…

Metropolitan Atlanta is a sprawling cancer. Metastasizing at a prodigious rate like a black hole somewhere lightyears away. It suffocates everything as it sucks in more people every year, and spits out used and abused people and things that litter the once pristine environment. It is an area that in 2002, surpassed 92 million miles driven annually (roughly the distance from the Earth to the Sun). The current madness of EV transportation will not change a thing for Atlanta’s future. Massive sprawl will continue at an even greater rate.

We live south of Atlanta in the fringe areas of white flight and see the same thing occurring on a smaller scale. While we can still head to the beaches in the panhandle region of Florida with no metropolitan areas to fight, going to our first love, The Great Smoky Mountains, or any area north of where we live has become a nightmare.

Not long ago in the 1990s, we could enjoy a day trip in our MG cars, or on a motorcycle (BMW or HD) to the Smoky Mountains. It was our annual trip for celebrating our honeymoon decades earlier. no longer is that possible because of urban sprawl and the associated impacts from that creeping cancer.

The last several drives to the mountains have been brutal. Traffic gridlock, road construction, wrecks, road rage and it seems every conceivable human nastiness one can imagine is an everyday occurrence throughout the day, every day.

We left at sunrise, arrived at the cardiologist office at 1pm (an hour and a half longer trip than was normal five years ago), and drove to the lake for a picnic. The extremely cold wind across the lake, was unusual, and it was brutal with 20 mph sustained winds, that froze my fingers as we tried to endure a short picnic. We packed it all in and decided to head home. No photos, no food. But we had a warm car to enjoy riding in and take in the colorful mountains for an hour.

Then, we hit the urban sprawl wall. It took us four hours to get into and through Atlanta so we could enjoy the relatively open road south of the airport. Yes, two hours of gridlocked traffic, which is apparently what people in Atlanta live with each day. Insane.

We made it home at 8pm. Beaten up but not defeated. Angry but grateful to be out of the grips of Atlanta.

Why do I bother to complain in this forum about the realities of living in such a place as Atlanta? It is simply to warn anyone that if you expect to enjoy casual trips anywhere here, it will be a disappointment at best. It is not worth the effort.

I can’t think of a time when I did not even stop for a few photographs. It has never happened. Sure, the light was harsh, and the people were harsher. But, the experience of a simple tour through the mountains being a nightmare became obvious the last time we went to the Smoky Mountains with gridlock because hundreds of people stopped and blocked the only road to get out of their cars and get snapshots of a bear. It was a harbinger of what we now see everywhere we go. Apparently, there has been a social/mental health change in general because of the pandemic which seems to be slowly retreating (but not vanishing).

Things have changed, as Bob Dylan wrote and so creatively expressed years ago. It will be difficult to enjoy photo trips again.

I guess we are destined to stay close to home.

Nikon D850
(apparently an obsolete camera now)
View attachment 197670

Most modern cities are perversions of human life. People tell me that they have to live in the city to stay close to culture, opportunity and... people. In the time of the internet, they stay in boxes on top of each other to interact with computerised, electronic reproductions of other humans staying in other boxes on top of other people in another city, somewhere else.

 

[dave.gt]

Well, now, I have my FM2 and FE2 loaded as usual, and in another bag(s), I have my AF Nikons ready as well. All that is missing is opportunity, and, a BMW R75/90, or in my case, as in the past, another British sports car (to enjoy the mild aggravation of maintaining such vintage machinery).

No one inspires my thoughts of enjoying simple things like Godfrey and Jorgen!