Happy Accidents

I have a new camera.

Two new cameras, actually.  But one of them was a gift.

It's a Nikon N70 - a 35mm film camera that was given to me a few weeks ago.  By the time you read this, it'll be a few months ago.

Before I received the camera, I read the manual, and I ... I hesitated.  Because the camera does all the work for you. Shutter speed, aperture, focus.  You can change one or more of these to manual, but, by default, it's a purely automated camera. So I wasn't sure if I'd like using it or not.

See, I like having control over my photos.  Even if I screw up - because I can blame my screwups on my own ineptitude.  Having things not turn out right because of a tech failure is annoying.  Sometimes.

And I'm a bit of a Pentax loyalist. Getting a Nikon ... well ... it felt odd to me.

So far, I've put only a single roll of film through this camera. It was a roll of slide film (E-6 process) that expired in 1991.

Yes. 1991.  When my dad saw that I was shooting film again, he went out to the garage and grabbed all the film that had been sitting in the garage for years and years.

The general rule of thumb with expired film is +1 step for every decade it's expired. And expect grain. It just does that.

For extra-fun, I cross-processed it. This was, admittedly, largely because E-6 processing is hard to find and relatively expensive. And because I wanted to know what would happen. I was curious, and I wanted this roll of film to be a total surprise as well as a test of the camera.



It's grainy because (as I mentioned above) it's so long expired.  The colors are slightly wrong because of the cross-processing. It's not dramatic, but I do like the effect.  Enough that I will probably cross-process again. If I can find some slide film fairly cheaply.

This camera had an additional surprise for me: The film advance is sporadic. So I occasionally get double (or even triple) exposures.  Like this one:



I'm not entirely sure why I like this shot so well. It's at least a double exposure, and may even be a triple.

I don't know how much I'll use this camera for "serious" shooting. The sporadic advance means I can't rely on it 100%.  But it also means that the camera will be fun to use.

We'll see what happens in the future.