Underexposure
I've had 8 or 9 rolls of film through the Nikon F in the last few months. Every one of them has been underexposed by about 2 stops. I realised this suddenly whilst scanning the 2 rolls from the Orange Walk, and 2 more from the anti-Trump protest in George Sq. And I cast my mind back to the black and white darkroom course I did at Streetlevel back in March, when my prints were all coming out underexposed.
Since then I've learned to compensate with the enlarger, which is ok, but one wants good negatives. You can compensate in scanning software, too, but you lose that pin-sharpness you should get from an F and the f1.4 50mm lens.
Soon after I got the F I sent it off for a CLA to a company in Liverpool. That was back in 2011, and after seven years I'm unwilling to say categorically that they didn't do a good job. It does seem that a year later I blamed myself for the fact the F wasn't taking quite the photos I wanted, "If you take a not-very-good photo with an F, you've no bugger to blame but yourself. You need to look at it, as I am with this one, and say 'Wtf went wrong here?' And when you've worked out wtf it was, work out how not to do it again."
It is perhaps not coincidental that I lost interest in photography altogether around that time. So the realisation that it actually WAS the camera at fault, not me, was quite something. As soon as I left Street level with the 4 rolls of underexposed negatives last Monday, I walked around to Merchant City Cameras and told them the situation. They don't deal with that sort of thing, but suggested Cameratiks in Edinburgh. I at last got around to contacting them this morning, and will take the train through there when I get the time.
Since then I've learned to compensate with the enlarger, which is ok, but one wants good negatives. You can compensate in scanning software, too, but you lose that pin-sharpness you should get from an F and the f1.4 50mm lens.
Soon after I got the F I sent it off for a CLA to a company in Liverpool. That was back in 2011, and after seven years I'm unwilling to say categorically that they didn't do a good job. It does seem that a year later I blamed myself for the fact the F wasn't taking quite the photos I wanted, "If you take a not-very-good photo with an F, you've no bugger to blame but yourself. You need to look at it, as I am with this one, and say 'Wtf went wrong here?' And when you've worked out wtf it was, work out how not to do it again."
It is perhaps not coincidental that I lost interest in photography altogether around that time. So the realisation that it actually WAS the camera at fault, not me, was quite something. As soon as I left Street level with the 4 rolls of underexposed negatives last Monday, I walked around to Merchant City Cameras and told them the situation. They don't deal with that sort of thing, but suggested Cameratiks in Edinburgh. I at last got around to contacting them this morning, and will take the train through there when I get the time.
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