TMX100 vs LX7

Here I compare the same scenes taken with the Nikon F5 using TMX 100 developed in Xtol and my Lumix LX7. It's not the whole roll but gives one some idea. The metering on the F5 is very good.

TMX100	LX7

Power to weight ratios

The Nikon F5 is a fairly heavy camera, so I began to wonder about the ratio of pixels to weight. Here are the results.  

Camera	Weight	Image size	MP / lb
Lumix LX7	10oz	10MP	16MP/lb
Mamiya RZ (110mm f2.8)	5lb 9oz1	26MP3	4.7MP/lb
Olympus OM2-SP (50mm f1.4)	1lb 15oz	8MP4	3.5MP/lb
Cambo 45SR (180mm f5.6)	24lb2	52MP5	2.2MP/lb
Nikon F5 (24-85mm f4.5)	4lb 6oz	8MP4	1.5MP/lb

1 - Includes the LX7 in lieu of a light meter. Does not include tripod.
2 - Includes tripod, but not case or extra film.
3 - Scanned at 2000dpi.
4 - Scanned at 3200dpi.
5 - Scanned at 1800dpi.

So it turns out that the Nikon has the lowest power to weight ratio, lower than the Cambo SR! The Mamiya does well (though with a tripod it comes out no better than the Olympus).

Middle age

There comes a point where one has to come to terms with a shift in perspective, a sea-change in motivations.

This is it.

Last week, I bought an Nikon F5 and a Nikkor 24-85mm AF VR zoom. I mention the letters... well I'll come back to that. In my defense, I paid less in inflation adjusted dollars than I did for my Olympus OM-1n in 1980¹. And I didn't even have a job then...

It gradually dawned on me that I have no real photographic use for the camera. I don't shoot much 35mm; if I want good images, I have 4x5 for really big files, and 6x7 if I want quality with something I can walk around with. 35mm delivers less in terms of resolution than my 10MP Lumix LX7 (which I really like). I don't need 8 frames per second (which translates to $4.50 worth of TMX100 in three seconds) or 1/8000^th of a second shutter speed; I can even work a rewind lever; you can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb.

While I do enjoy the process of developing film, that's mostly nostalgia and comes with a penalty; digitally spotting the negatives, which is not that much less tedious than doing it with a paint brush - as on many an evening I watched Derek doing years ago. Anyway, I've already got two very nice and easy-to-use Olympus OM-SP2s that I've had for years were I really going to go back to shooting 35mm. Given that film is getting more and more expensive, I began to wonder what on earth I'd done (or more precisely why I'd done it).

The only reason one is left with that isn't self-justifying post-hoc rationalization is that I'm buying as a collector rather than a photographer. I've always had a bit of a hankering for the F2. I nearly bought one ten years ago at auction (though in hindsight I'm quite glad I didn't). And the F5 I found is a very nice example of Nikon's last heavy duty film camera; not a mark on it. It's got a host of features that presage the flexibility of digital cameras (most of which I probably won't ever use). My MO, where available, is almost always aperture priority, even on the LX7 so P and S aren't of much interest, though M I will need for flash. Double exposure I did and got bored with 30 years ago. I'm too cheap to bracket, and I don't want to spend $240 on a card reader to get the EXIF data out of the camera, though I would if I could find a cheaper way of doing it.

There are some things though, that my older 35mm equipment doesn't have and these may lead me to pick up this camera to take pictures. First, the auto-focus appears to be very precise and while I'm not too lazy to turn the focusing ring by hand, it does mean one thing less to have to do before pressing the button; much more point-and-shoot-like. And it's extremely fast so I don't miss the shot with a moving subject while trying to keep it in focus. That the AF piece.

The other is VR. The only vibration reduction device I've used on a film camera is a tripod. Though I've not yet run a roll through the camera (the lens only arrived today) it's going to allow me to use slower, finer grained film. My current preference is for TMX 100.

Some other nice touches on the body are the built in winder, the automatic setting of the film speed (no more "duh! I forgot to change the ASA"), really easy film loading, a little window in the back so that you can see the film canister that's actually in the camera (avoiding having to stick ends to film cartons into the slot on the back), and a very comprehensive digital display in the viewfinder. All in all it's a very well thought out camera with lots of touches to make ones life easier.

One thing that did surprise me is that the viewfinder is much smaller than the OM-SP2 or the FE. Clearly a design decision was taken somewhere that you had to move your eye too much to take in the entire filed so viewfinder have gotten smaller. I'm not sure I like the smaller viewfinder but we'll see.

I want to pay tribute to Nikon's designers and management for the attention they paid to backwards compatibility. It would have been easy (and almost certainly cheaper) to build new products that weren't constrained by earlier design choices. But starting with the transition to AI lenses in the 1970s, allowing users to preserve their investment in lenses when upgrading bodies and vice-versa, this was, and clearly still is, a central design tenet (and one by the way that IBM didn't understand until it cancelled the FS project at the 11th hour).  So the 24-85mm lens that Nikon only announced in June last year works perfectly on a body the company stopped making nearly 10 years ago. The other side of the coin is that Nikon's design and engineering teams must have had a very long product road map and designed current products with future ones in mind.  In this day and age of built in obsolescence, disposable products and computer software which won't work on last years operating system, that's something to which I think we've become quite unaccustomed.

So although this is really more of a collectible that a tool, for a while at least, it may be my nearest film based alternative to the LX7 (though it's clearly not quite convenient or discrete).

1. I paid £125 for my OM-1n, which I bought used in 1980 from Fox Talbot in Hammersmith. Adjusting for inflation and exchange rates, that's between $644 and $846, depending on whether you apply UK inflation to the pound and then do the exchange at today's rates, or do the exchange at 1980 rates and then apply US inflation. Averaging the two gives $746, more than the $715 I paid in total for a 'new (other)' lens on eBay and an E+ used body from Adorama.

TMAX 100

When my Nikon FE arrived I wanted to put a roll through quickly to make sure the meter and shutter worked properly.  I had lots of rolls of Kodak Gold 200 so I shot a roll of 24 exposures. Since CVS got rid of their film processing last year, I took it down to Walmart (3 more miles, round trip); only to find it too no longer develops on the premises. Inevitable I know, but a shame none the less. I can only hope that film finds the same roll as vinyl; an old technology that comes back in to fashion.

So I needed to do some B&W that I could develop myself. In 35mm, I had some FP4, a roll of Kentmere 100 and two rolls of TMAX 100 that Russell Kord kindly gave 20 years ago. So I put in the the TMAX, which I'd never used before, and these are some of the results.

The top two images both have bits of sky which is where film grain tends to be most conspicuous. The clips on the right of each illustrate how little grain TMAX has. Of course, without a yellow filter, the sky is quite white and grain may be more apparent when it's darkened with a filter. But it's pretty encouraging nonetheless, and seems to be considerably better here than Fuji Neopan. More tests are in order.    

As a footnote, I'm astounded that the film was still good after 20 years of being carted around (and not kept in a temperate controlled cellar).

Shocker!

No, not Andy Murray winning Wimbledon (thought that's pretty momentous - first Brit to win the men's singles in 77 years); but that my new (old) Nikon is less than an once heavier than my trusty Olympus!

When Olympus launched the OM-1 in 1972 - I remember it like it was yesterday - the big selling points were its size and weight.

The publicity material was stunning. Black lettering (matt) on a black (glossy) background. Only thing missing was the black light lighting up black, to tell you... (for those of you old - and geeky - enough to remember Zaphod and Arthur). But I digress...

I gave my Nikkormat FTn to my father and bought my first OM-1n, used, in 1979. I had that camera for just 2 years until Andy North left it in his room - unlocked - and it was stolen.

The next OM was another OM-1n (£125), again used, from Fox Talbot in Hammersmith.  That camera I still have. It's been through some pretty harsh treatment, particularly the 130F heat of the Sahara desert; not to mention the sand.

Fast forward 20 years and the next OM - well two actually - were a pair of OM-2S' which I picked up for very little money on eBay in 2001. One of those is that pictured here. And in case you're interested, I have found that setting the shutter to 60 mechanical (the red numbers) and the metering to 'Program' does seem to prevent the much discussed battery drain. The current battery has been in the camera for so long - probably 2 years - that I've forgotten exactly when I put it in.

Anyway, in the 34 years I've used Olympus cameras, I've always held onto the belief, as touted in the Olympus marketing campaign 41 years ago, that the OM system was smaller and lighter than it's competitors.

So it came as something of a surprise to find that my new (old) Nikon FE2 which I bought on eBay last week was almost exactly the same weight. With the practically identical 35-105mm zoom lens, the OM-2 weighed in at 2lb 4.8oz and the Nikon at 2lb 5.1oz, less than 1% heavier.

The FE2 doesn't have the OM-2's 'Program' mode - which is fine since I never use it anyway, and is easier to use in manual. It does have two faster shutter speeds, 1/2000^th and 1/4000^th, neither of which I'm likely to use either. The matching needles in the viewfinder for manual mode metering is inspired, and much more intuitive and informative than the 'up a bit, down a bit' metering that many manual cameras, including the OM-1 and OM-2, use. And the sound of the shutter / mirror is remarkable. Much crisper than the OM-2, and as it turns our, a tad louder. It's probably purely imaginary but it sounds like good engineering.

This is the first grown-up Nikon I've owned; the Nikkormat doesn't count (and that was a really heavy camera). So a bit late in life (mine and that of film photography), I've been converted to Nikon!

I would still like to have an OM-5D; but my loyalty to Olympus has dissipated a little on discovering that in fact it wasn't the smallest, lightest SLR on the market. And as full-frame DSLRs become affordable, maybe at some point I'll get a Nikon.

The shutter sound    

Here's a recording of the two shutters. The first is the OM-1n (both OM-2s have film in), the second the FE2. Both were set to 1/250th of a second. The third and fourth pairs of firings show the wave form in Audacity.

un-ortho-dox

Partly out of curiosity, partly because 4x5 film is getting more expensive, I decided to experiment with some orthochromatic film. On an unrelated note, today is shorter than yesterday, reminding me that another year begins to wind down and time is getting shorter by the minute.

So what did I find? First, my safe light isn't as safe as I thought (too high a wattage bulb - but that's another story) so I fogged a fair amount of film.

Second, skys look funny, perhaps something to do with the polarization of the light in that the part you expect to be deepest blue is lightest (unless that's another artifact from fogging the film).

Third, the emulsion terribly delicate. Tray processing is really hard because the emulsion scratches so easily.

Fourth, the film is very thin which creates handling problems; for example, it buckles easily, and two sheets can easily get stuck together in the tank.    

Finally, the detail the film resolves is extraordinary. On the left is a 6 kdpi scan of the Tuff Shed plaque above the door in the image above.

The film does have some very unfamiliar characteristics, but at 20c a sheet, I can do quite a few experiments to gain some familiarity with how it behaves and what I might do with it.

For the record, I developed these in Xtol 1+4 for about 8 minutes. I didn't take the temperature but I imagine given an ambient of about 80F, that it was not far off this (~26C).

More Arista Testing

Two more test of Arista EDU 4x5 sheet film. I've loaded all my film holders with ISO 100 on one side and ISO 200 on the other. Since I got into the habit of exposing both sides of the holder as a matter of course, this is a simple way to test the films; or at least is would be if Arista notched their films differently. Since both emulsions are notched the same, you have to keep careful track of them in the trays and it's possible that I mixed them up along the way. So all of what follows may be back to front.

The 200 ASA film was thin and underdeveloped. It may need longer than my time/temp calculator is suggesting.

100 ASA, Xtol 1+1,  4:52 @ 25C

200 ASA. Xtol 1+1,  5:50 @ 25C

The 200 image has blown highlights, a narrower dynamic range and steeper curve in the middle than the 100. However, while there are things I like about both images, each can be replicated with with other.

200 ASA, Xtol 1+1,  4:52 @ 25C

100 ASA, Xtol 1+1,  4:52 @ 25C

Here I have tried to replicate 100 ASA image with the 200 ASA negative (left) and the 200 ASA image with the 100 ASA negative (right). Not perfect by any means, but fairly close.

The bottom line is that there is so much that can be done in GIMP (or similar) that the main thing is to  know what kind of image you want and worry less about the developer and the film. Although purists will say that you should get the negative right at exposure / developing (it's hard to argue with that), you aren't completely sunk if you don't. With the aid of scanners and computers, it is now very much easier to recover from a poorly exposed or improperly developed image that it used to be.

So I'm not much closer to choosing a 4x5 film. I'm sure some wag will say it depends what you want to capture and that one should match the emulsion to the subject, but I'm not that good (of fussy).

This morning I did a blind taste test of Peet's and Green Mountain coffees. Both were bold dark roast. I couldn't tell them apart.  I'm sure that some people with more evolved sense could but at the moment I'll take what come (in coffees and photographic emulsions).