Validation – A One-shot Story

This story begins around New Year’s Eve 2024 when I happened to be browsing YouTube and I watched a video entitled: The Film Camera You Should Actually Buy. Some may recall other posts I’ve made here beginning a year ago or so dealing with various camera purchases and problems. In any case, the video suggested that the Nikon FE was important enough that I should go looking for one.

I never owned a Nikon – not in the 50 years or so that I’ve been shooting photographs.

A quick visit to eBay followed by a: BUY IT NOW and I had a seventh film camera on the way.

It arrived from Japan on 8 January and the e-Series Nikon 36-72/3.5 zoom lens promptly fell apart. The zoom barrel/focus ring completely fell off the rest of the lens body and it didn’t seem to want to go back on. I’m not big on DIY but to be honest, if I had to purchase another lens, my $82.00 bargain wasn’t going to be much of a bargain (in my head I’m calling it $82 because if I add in the $34 shipping it doesn’t seem like a bargain any longer).

An on-line post to DPReview yielded a helpful link to: Richard Haw’s Classic Nikon Maintenance which described working on that very lens. I would imagine that many Nikon owners are familiar with Richard’s site as it contains a wealth of experience distilled into concise articles describing fixes to various Nikon issues.  Halfway down Richard’s article about this lens he begins describing maintenance with the following warning:

“This lens is best left to the professional repairman to tackle. If you are new to lens repair just skip this one until you have acquired the right skills, this will require some special tools to service properly.”

I’d worked on mechanical wristwatches in the past and had the tools, I just need the confidence. In short order and armed with the confidence of Richard’s article I had the front element off the zoom/focus barrel, and I was able to re-engage the helicoid and re-assemble the lens.

My new-to-me Nikon needed film and I had decided that it would be color. I also decided that I’d brave the temperature-controlled world of home development and give that a shot as well. The camera was clumsily loaded with 36 exposures of Fujifilm Superia 400 color negative film. Let me say that of all the 35mm cameras that I have loaded with film, the Canon FTb is by far the easiest. My first load in the Nikon resulted in not getting the film notched into the take-up spool and upon that realization, I started again and decided to trash the first 10 shots.

I had decided to use CineStll’s Cs41 “Color Simplified” 2-Bath Kit which I ordered along with a few other odds and ends. One recommendation that I had received was to use a Sous Vide device to maintain the temperature and circulation of my water bath. This ended up working quite well although it also added to my investment in handling color film.

With the camera loaded and various supplies on the way, I ventured out to expose the remaining 26 or so exposures. I took the Nikon along with me on a Bald Eagle shoot some 60 miles east of home. I ended up finishing off the remaining few shots at the McMenamins Edgefield property where my wife and I were married and where we spend time during summer evening enjoying a glass of wine and listening to music. Edgefield used to be the county “poor farm” but it was resurrected and is now a local destination. The shot above was taken at Edgefield and is (the back side) of one of several bars located around the property.

Using a trusty “church key” I cracked open the film canister and loaded my developing tank (sitting on the floor of my darkened bedroom closet). I mixed up my two bath chemicals and adjusted the temperature of my water bath. After 12 minutes or so at 102 degrees F my negatives looked like they were supposed to look. Letting them dry for a day I proceeded to scan them using a Valoi Easy35 and a 42mp Sony a7R3 as described previously here.

One critical difference between doing black and white v. color is that the whole inversion process isn’t as trivial. I ended up adding more to my investment in color film by purchasing Film Lab to do the color inversion. While Negative Lab Pro (NLP) seems to be the popular choice for conversion it is probably largely driven by the predominance of Adobe use. I don’t own any Adobe photo s/w so I wanted an inversion solution that was one-click that didn’t require Adobe. After watching some YT videos on Film Lab I was convinced when I saw you could “cut and paste” your edit criteria from one frame to your entire roll. This would work well if all of your shots were properly exposed and needed the same cropping. Mine were not but the above one shot represents validation that:

• My lens repair worked,
• My lens focuses,
• My meter works,
• My color development technique was within tolerance and
• My color inversion s/w did what I wanted it to do.

So you see what one-shot meant to me with all of these variables in question.

Perhaps a future article will have more photographs and fewer links?

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