nature — Pho-Art Blog

Week 10 camera is my newly acquired Nikon EM. I bought this recently from KEH Camera as I wanted to have a small Nikon Film SLR to carry in my bag for upcoming Spring outings to festivals, nature walks, and day hiking. I have a nice Nikon E Series 50mm 1.8 prime lens to use with it, and aside from manual focusing, I should be able to concentrate on framing up my photos instead of fiddling with the settings. The Nikon EM is a battery powered compact film SLR that features aperture priority semi-automatic exposure control. It was designed for beginners wanting to purchase an inexpensive interchangeable lens camera. Though not highly successful in it's time, the Nikon EM and Series E lenses are a good price/performance value in the used market. I purchased this bargain rated camera for $14 from KEH Camera and had previously purchased the Nikon Series E 50mm 1.8 pancake lens for $49 from Ebay. The lens of course, can be used on other Nikon cameras, of which I have two others.

When I pick out a camera for the week, I like to carry it with me and just get random photos of whatever Brenda and I might doing that week. This week was hard, my father passed away and we were having his visitation and memorial services over the weekend. But I needed to try to be doing the things that I enjoy to ease the emotional, exhausting time that our family was going through. Some of these photos will be a reminder of this time when I look at them in the future, as is the case with almost every photo that I take. Most of the photos on this roll were taken on a nature walk at La-Ho trail at Lake Marburg, in Hanover, PA the day after my father's memorial service. It was a beautifully sunny day which was comforting and gave me something to look forward to - the coming warm and sunny weather of Spring and Summer.

I cross-processed the film in a Unicolor C-41 kit from Film Photography Project and scanned the negatives with an Epson V500 Photo flatbed scanner. I like the amber cast that came through on some of the nature shots and also the coloring on the photos of the abandoned buildings, giving them a sepia antique photo quality. Only minor adjustments were made to the negative scans, using the levels adjustment in Photoshop to pick out the lightest and darkest parts of each scan. I would like to try this camera and lens with the expired Portra 160 NC film that I have and also with black and white film.

I really wanted to get out yesterday and shoot some instant photos with my newest instant camera, the Lomo'Instant Wide. I've haven't shot with it extensively to get a feel for the camera and I thought I could try using the close-up lens and the Lomography Splitzer. I had also packed two other cameras, my Holga WPC 120 and my handy Pentax Q10 mirrorless camera. I spent a good bit of time by the lakeside trying to capture some detailed photos of the shore debris and made a few mistakes, but that's how you learn the camera. I also took a walk out on one of the horse riding trails as there weren't any riders on such a chilly day. There's an area along the trail thick with tall needle-less pine trees that I've wanted to get back to take some photos. Here are a few samples from the afternoon.