Tag Archives: Nikon
52 Cameras: Nikon Coolpix L310
Nikon still has the manual here.
A photo that was on the SD card when I got the camera.
I’ll do a separate “Phound Photos” post. The card had images from 14 Dec 2012 to 11 Jul 2013.
52 Cameras: #188 – Nikon Lite•Touch Zoom120ED QD AF
52 Cameras: # 171 — Nikon FM10
52 Cameras: # 164 — Nikon N8008s (F-801S)
FPP Retrochrome (Ektachrome). Scanned at 4800, color corrected, and shrunk to 1024 on the long side for the blog.
Hard to balance. Ektachrome is way less sensitive to red and somewhat less to green than blue.
These are screen grabs from GIMP.
Decomposing to the individual channels gives some interesting insight. This creates a gray scale image for each color channel representing the strength of that color’s contribution to the image as a value from 0 (black) to 255 (white). Obviously, the amount of each color mostly depends on the subject matter.

Green is a lot stronger but maybe not as much as you’d expect. The line of trees behind the shore plants are juniper and piñon.
Blue is about what I’d expect a conversion to black and white to look like. It’s that overwhelming in this film.
52 Cameras: # 162 — Nikon FM
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Things I forgot in the video:
- The FM operates just fine without batteries — just with no metering.
- The frame counter (36 max) is on the top deck just in front of the wind lever.
- The LEDs in the viewfinder are used as a battery check.
- Film speeds are from ISO 12 to 3200. Full stops are numbered (100, 200, …) with dots for 1/3 stop increments (e.g., 64 & 80 between 50 and 100).
- Lift and turn the shutter speed knob to set the film speed.
- The back can be removed for an instant or bulk film back.
- The gallium photodiodes for metering are located in the eyepiece module rather than in the pentaprism. EV1 to EV18.
- The meter is 60/40 center weighted — 60% given to the center 12mm and the remaining 40% to the rest of the image in the viewfinder.
- No dedicated mirror lockup but it goes up when the self timer is used.
And… even reading the manual, I got the LED meanings wrong. + or – means more than 1 stop off. Center dot and + or – means 1/5 to 1 stop off.
Film Photography Project’s “Retrochrome” is expired, cold-stored Kodak Extachrome. Ektachrome is pretty cool, color-wise, even when fresh.
I added another image of Goober (2 versions) because it was a funny struggle to get the colors right. The white sheets were really cool (blue). I tried tons of different tweaks and it was either still too blue or over-corrected and orange. I played with filters while I decided whether to not use the image or just convert it to black and white. Most results were “meh” but I like this solarized one.
Finally, just goofing around, I chose the “skin tone” filter. It’s supposed to correct skin tones that look wrong, usually because of lighting. I clicked the dropper icon on Goober’s face and, like magic, the colors in the image were right.
52 Cameras: # 161 — Nikon FE
52 Cameras: # 139 — Nikon D200
Links mentioned in the video:
Nikon: D200 manuals, firmware, & software.
DPReview: Nikon D200 Review
Nikonians: Understanding Nikon’s Three Light Metering Systems
Nikonians: Understand the Multi-Cam 1000 Auto focus
52 Cameras: # 131 — Nikon Action Touch
While editing the video, I thought of a way to do exposure compensation. The lens is smaller than the glass covering and well above the CdS sensor. A bit of neutral density filter material over the sensor but not the lens and it’ll over-expose. Over the lens but not the sensor will underexpose. I have some 3-stop from using Instax in pack film Polaroids…
The film is Fuji 200 i got with a camera lot from a Craigslist ad. It was in his garage and I have no idea how old it is. Pretty grainy so I did some noise reduction and minor tone tweaks. Processed and scanned by Gold One Hour Photo in Los Angeles, CA.