I am not a tele-type of snapper at all, and I'm sure this lens will not be used by me every day. I popped it onto the front of my Nikkormat anyway just to give it a go and try to start some sort of relationship with the thing. As I'm totally unfamiliar with long focal lengths like this one it will take some time to get used to it for sure.
A tiny test print done a while ago on something that looks like Ilford Classic FB paper. 5"x5" or so, nothing big at all. I'll probably come back to this neg some day. The snap itself was done with the 6x6 Rolleiflex on a rather dark and drench day just over the top of the hill behind me, just past that lovely lighthouse up there.
Anyway it looks like a sturdy and chunky piece of kit, and typically it seems to be very well built with the right sorts of materials used in the right places. It's rather heavy and will throw any camera totally out of balance of course. Just like any other lengthy lens will do.
Fully open it reaches f/2.8 meaning it's a rather fast one, which might come in handy some day for all we know.
Another wrongly exposed neg done one day I was playing around with a handheld filter in front of the Rolleiflex lens. It worked well enough for the skies and such though, so I thought I'd just as well give it a go inside the darkroom. And sure enough I ended up wasting the paper as well as the film bit. And when it all looks pretty hopeless you can always dunk the print into a tray of selenium toner as well just to really mess stuff up. This paper really suck up toner, obviously. 5"x5" print done on Emaks 883 paper of unknown grade from Fotokemika.
I just spooled a small amount of quite old FP4 film into a film canister which I then threw inside the Nikkormat. I might just as well take a walk around the neighborhood just to check if there's still some life left in that film, and at the same time find out what this heavy piece of glass can be used for.
I went for a short walk yesterday as well, and sort of thought of a theme I'd like to explore a bit further. This might be the right lens for that job, or maybe I need something a bit shorter. I'll give it a go and let you know, of course.
Nothing much to talk about regarding this print other than mentioning the fact that it was thrown into some bleach yesterday (after the first couple of issues I had with way too strong mix...). Totally pointless since you can't see what it looked like before of course, but I can inform you that it looked even a bit worse than it does now. The tones in there lies a bit, as my phone seems to have added quite a bit of warmth to it. 5"x7" on Ilford Classic FB paper, ever so lightly toned with Selenium after a very quick overall bleach in Farmers Reducer.
PS! I'm back now, and learned that the 180 mm lens will not be of much use in this tiny little project anyway.
I don't know about under-exposed (that second print) but it's a mighty fine print to my eyes. Fantastic range of tones, Roy...Perfect, I should say!
SvarSlettAnd that Nikkor lens, big&long as it is, just might be the perfect thing when the time is right. Can't do any harm having it in the bag just in case... ;)
Thank you, Michael. They might even like it, the owners of the house and the out-buildings for all we know? It's the old lighthouse keepers house at Ona, and the people living up there seem to appreciate a good darkroom print when they see one. I even got a print on display already inside that house, as there's a museum inside the basement of it. Lighthouse dedicated stuff, of course... Oh, and then there's one of my prints upstairs as well, of their staircase as it happens. This one might blend in as well, for what we know...
Slett