Intro
Film has long been a favorite of mine for personal work. I typically have a film camera (or two or three) with me anytime I’m on the road. I almost always have some backlog of digital photos to edit for work so shooting the fun, non-professional stuff on film means I can enjoy the photographing part of it without feeling like I’m creating more work for myself.
I also have a bad habit of shooting rolls of film and then sort of forgetting about them. So let’s change that!
Nikonos V
The Nikonos V is one of my favorite cameras. It’s one of the few film cameras that has an integrated waterproof housing so you can shoot it like a normal 35mm camera without a bulky underwater housing case. Well almost, normally…I’ll get into that in another article where I’ll give some of my thoughts about the camera and it’s shooting experience. But before then I thought it would be fun to go through my favorite film cameras and share some shots from the first rolls that I put through them and some of my initial thoughts.
The Scene
I put the first roll through this camera the day Jodi and I took our first surfing lesson. As you can see, there are a lot more photos with surfboards in them than actual “surfing” photos.
I used the Lumu Light Meter on my phone to meter for the shots. It was a pretty cloudy day so I more or less set everything on shore and then just left it all the same while in the water.
These are all on Ilford HP5+
I got some kind of light leak near the end of the roll. I’m really not sure what cause that, but I haven’t experienced it any any other rolls with this camera since so I’m guessing the it was more an issue with the roll itself.
Initial Thoughts
This camera looks so dope! I mean, how can you not dig the orange panels on the front? And I love the big, chunky dials and buttons. From a usability perspective, it’s a fairly simple 35mm camera. It’s got a giant film advance lever which is great for operating it with wet suit gloves on. You’ll need to rely on zone focusing with this bad boy so I think I stopped down to 5.6 or 8 for alot of shots and just set focus to infinity. And that brings me to maybe my favorite aspect of the camera. Adjusting your focus and aperture are done with two giant knobs on either side of the lens that are super satisfying to twist, and again, very easy while in the water with bulky gloves on.
I do have an 80mm f/4 lens, that comes with a separate hot shoe viewfinder, but these were all shot on a 35mm f2.5 (weird, right?) lens.
The Photos
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