Take an old technology camera and an even older lens that almost no one has ever heard of and see what kind of creative spark emerges. That was the goal when I went out shooting the other day. This story is about images taken with the legendary Nikon D3S from 2009 timeframe, and a lens from the late 1960s.
A Few Words About the Gear
I was using a Nikon D3S digital camera with a 12MP resolution that still does a fantastic job with color and image quality. The lens is a very old (60 years?) manual focus wide-angle 21 mm lens with a maximum aperture of 3.5 that is a real surprise to me. The lens was designed for cameras with a 42 mm thread mount, like my Pentax Spotmatic SP or SP II, or one of my Exacta bodies (yes, I have more than one) from East Germany.
This week I purchased an adapter to enable me to mount the lens on a Nikon F camera body – and I have several Nikon F bodies. The examples here are from a Nikon D3S, but I could alson mount the lens on my Nikon D850 and use focus peaking – that test is coming next, or on one of my Nikon film cameras – my choice of the F1, FE2, or the F3.
Enough words, here are the pictures:
I shot all of these pictures in full manual mode on the D3S and am so excited to have this creative tool in my hands. Now imagine these images at 47MP instead of 12MP. That’s the next test on the D850. See you soon.
RiverDogs X -Words and Pictures from the River's Edge 