
Single tree flower
Nikon Nikomat FTn, 50mm f/2 Nikkor H-C
Fujifilm Fujicolor 200
2019
I had high hopes when I shot my Nikon Nikomat FTn again. I’ve learned so much about photography and using vintage gear in the last few years, and I expected all of that knowledge would come to bear in the images. Yet I felt disappointment as I looked at the scans. I didn’t like the colors the Nikkor H-C lens rendered on Fujicolor 200.
Maybe it wasn’t the lens, but the processing. Or maybe the film was funky. I don’t know. But I had to do a lot of work in Photoshop to remove a brown caste from nearly every image. I’ve seen green and blue castes before, but never brown. It was weird.
Because of a scanner snafu some of the images weren’t usable at all. The lab agreed to rescan the negatives for me, and I’ve sent them back, but not before I scanned them myself. This is one of my scans. It isn’t bad but it’s mighty noisy. It’s not a bad look but it wasn’t the smooth, crisp look I was going for.
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