Main library in Vienna

Another Nikon AF600 shot - nice resolution for a small P&S camera:

I seriously think I will be switching my photo hosting to Picasa - with Google+ You have UNLIMITED photo space.

Nikon's smallest P&S - Nikon AF600

Another small P&S camera I've came across is the Nikon AF600. It's almost as small as Mju-II and definetely smaller than Big Mini.
It's got 28mm lens with 3.5 maximal aperture. I needed a little bit time to get used to that wide angle. The lens itself is very sharp (for a p&s) and doesn't have too much vignetting or distortion. Autofocus and metering wotks excellent! All the 36 pics I made are perfectly usable!

This shot has been made on Portra 160 film (slightly cropped and converted to bw):

And here's the little hero:

A beautiful view...

...to me for sure!

Made this shot with Nikon F60 and Nikkor 50 f1.8 lens - I believe it was made in Auto mode.
I used Kodak Elite Chrome 100 film and converted it to bw in pp.
The pic is slightly cropped from above, to remove distracting white part of the clothes from the frame.
I also added a bit contrast to the bush on the right hand side to balance the composition.

Nikon F3 vs Minolta X-700 - comparision!

The F3 is a top of the Nikon's line manual focus camera - it's the last manual focus nikon from professional F-series. There is plenty of informations about it in Internet already. Definetely the best F3 review / description is to be found HERE and HERE.

I will purely concentrate on comparision between F3 and state of art Minolta X-700 (introduced 2 years after Nikon's F3, X-700 was the last high specification MF Minolta, in-depth review are HERE and HERE)

AREN'T THEY SIMILAR?

The similarities doesn't end on the outside, they both have:
- nearly identical handling and operation
- similar horizontal-travel shutter
- similar technical specification (of course, F3 a bit forward here)



Technical specification of F3 was, of course top-notch at the time, the clear advantages over X-700 are:
- wider shutter speeds range 8 seconds to 1/2000
- interchangeable finders and focus screens
- mirror lock up
- T time for extra long exposures
- mechanical shutter release

Minolta X-700 was of course MUCH cheaper than Nikon, but still have some advantages over F3:
- NORMAL HOT SHOE
- fully automatic P mode
- no need to remove a cap to connect the Motor Drive (which really is pida in F3)
- build-in vertical shutter release in MD1

As for today, each of them have one additional advantage over the contestor:

You can use virtually every ever produced Nikkor lens with F3, what makes it a nice companion to modern DSLR. You can't do it with X-700. Minolta dropped the MD mount with introduction of AF Dynax/Maxxum series.

The PRICE of the lenses, otoh, speaks clearly pro Minolta - you can buy this wonderful 50mm 1.7 Rokkor for next to nothing, whereas a similar Nikkor is like $100.

Some of the most important RULES OF PHOTOGRAPHY

In 1967 Edward Weston wrote:

"...few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don't know what to do with it."


and:


"...the task can be made immeasurably easier by selecting the simplest possible equipment and procedures and staying with them. Learning to see in terms of the field of one lens, the scale of one film and one paper, will accomplish a good deal more than gathering a smattering of knowledge about several sets of tools."


This is a photo I made in 2005 with my first SLR camera - Nikon F60 (with some crappy plasticky zoom lens). Film: Kodak Gold 200. I decided later on to convert it to bw: