New Toys: Micro Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 and PK-13

After many years of hacking together macro things, reversing lenses, stacking lenses together, stacking reversed lenses on extension tubes, picking up old lenses with macro modes, etc., and after liking the results I got with them sometimes, I finally decided to pick up a proper macro lens, mostly to be the major part in a new Scan-O-Matic. I came up with the following criteria:

  • a filter ring that doesn’t rotate with focusing
  • corner-to-corner sharpness at f/5.6 or better
  • no light falloff at f/5.6 or better
  • 1:2 ratio (half life size), at least
  • a relatively short minimum focus distance

After weeks of research and hemming and hawing, while shopping for a new film camera, I did a quick search for the Micro Nikkor 55mm AI-s and spotted this one for a good price, with the PK-13 extension ring that will get it to 1:1. Continue reading “New Toys: Micro Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 and PK-13”

New Toys!

Back during the trip to Chicago (I think) I started having a problem with the meter on the FG: it would stop working at random points, and the M90 leds would start flashing (the 1/60th and 1/125th lights in the finder that flash when you first load a new roll of film, but before the camera decides you’ve wound on a couple of frames). It was all very random, sometimes it would be right at the beginning of a roll; other times it would happen in the middle.

I commented on this a couple of weeks ago, and did end up trying my hand at some diy camera repair (more on that later), but as a fallback option, decided to find another old, inexpensive film camera in case I couldn’t fix the FG. After several days of research, I decided on the slightly older, slightly more feature-rich Nikon FE. Continue reading “New Toys!”

Kodak Porta: around the house and on the road

Over the couple of weeks it took me to shoot through the last of the Porta, I took  few random shots around the house, and a few more out the front or side window of the car…  Continue reading “Kodak Porta: around the house and on the road”