Photography: Nikon F5

Everything Falls Apart.

Over the last year and a half, I have become interested in 35mm film photography, starting with some cameras my late grandfather gifted me. In that time, I shot over 100 rolls of film, most using manual-focus lenses. I have come to enjoy the slower, more methodical pace of using manual-focus lenses and considering the best settings to get a good exposure without seeing a preview of the eventual image (unlike digital photography). Most of these rolls of film have been taken on a Nikon F2 (1971) and an F3 (1980), two of Nikon’s professional film cameras. I started to appreciate their excellent build quality, handling, and extensive line of lenses dating back to 1959. Having tried a few other cameras from Nikon’s professional line, I became interested in the Nikon F5, Nikon’s last widely used film camera before digital took over. Released in 1996 with the tagline of "Imported from the future," the camera was incredibly advanced, with a design that defined Nikon’s cameras to this day. The camera is even featured in the film The Lost World: Jurassic Park. The camera is easy to find on eBay for around $300, so I thought it would be fun to get one and try it out, knowing it could use all of my Nikkor manual focus lenses, alongside newer autofocus Nikon lenses. I found a mint copy of the camera from Japan and have been taking miniature photos with it, and wanted to share some!

Photography: Using an incident light meter for better film photos

Prepare the Ground. (Tri-X 400, Nikon F3).

Miniature photography (and photography in general) has become substantially easier with the advent of advanced integrated light meters and digital displays that preview what the photo will look like when you press the shutter. These features, common on modern mirrorless and phone cameras (and DSLRs to an extent), make achieving a desired outcome more intuitive, since you can adjust settings and see the effects in real time. When taking miniature photos using film, however, things are more difficult. With film, you do not have the luxury of previewing the picture before taking it. Most film cameras have relatively simple integrated light meters that measure reflected light and estimate the necessary setting required to obtain what it thinks is a proper exposure (often trying to achieve 18% neutral gray). These, however, can be easily fooled when lighting conditions are not ideal, resulting in meter predictions that lead to over- or underexposed images, if you do not know how the meter works. For example, when using my Nikon F3 and Minolta SrT 201, their internal meters often overexpose images of miniatures, since the scenes I try to capture are dark and moody, but the integrated meter attempts to increase the exposure to achieve neutral gray. In the past few months, I have been using an external incident light meter to get around this issue.

Using old DSLR's for Miniature Photography: Nikon D7000

Hess Poison Breath.

In this hobby, we tend to focus on building and painting models and spend considerably less time photographing our creations, aside from taking some quick photos with our cell phones. Over the last few years I have been trying to change this and have been making a concerted effort to improve as a photographer. I started this journey with a mirrorless camera (Fujifilm XT4), but last year, after being gifted some single-lens reflex (SLR) film cameras from my grandfather, I was inspired to learn more about the process and leverage it to better document my hobby journey. This pushed me to explore the analog world of film photography and recently to print some of my photography. 

Vastarian: Hypatia Etranzi

I don’t fear hell.¹

Earlier this year we started to create more models for Special Operations Unit Mitsukurina, an elite unit within the Adeptus Arbites, that we created a few years ago. The unit is operational on Vastarian, trying to manage the psychic upheaval. We were able to use the two new members we converted in some games at Adepticon. Due to running out of time before the convention, I was only able to partially paint the new models. Now that things have settled down, I was able to finally finish painting the leader, Hypatia Etranzi!

Miniature Photography with 35mm film

Exakta VX (1955) next to Fujifilm XT4 (2020).

Over the many years running this blog, I have increasingly spent more time thinking about photography. Taking good photos is important to get people interested in your work, to clearly convey ideas, and to document things effectively. For most of the blog’s existence, I used my phone’s camera. And while I found success with this, I started to recognize that my phone often struggled to get miniatures entirely in focus, due to the fixed wide aperture (low F-stop, letting in a lot of light, but with a shallow depth of field, particularly if close to the subject), and the photos often looked unnatural due in part to the aggressive computational processing that was done on each, regardless of my input. This led me to getting a mirrorless digital camera, specifically a Fujifilm XT4. I selected the camera due to it being one of the only modern cameras made with “traditional” dials, like old 35mm film cameras, for the important elements of the exposure triangle: ISO (International Organization for Standardization, a measure of light sensitivity), Shutter Speed, and Aperture (this is on the lens themselves, rather than the camera body). Instead of these things being controlled electronically inside the camera, I thought the physical dials would force me to be more mindful of these settings, rather than relying on the camera to do it automatically. The camera also has the ability to use preset “film simulations” which allow one to take photos that would emulate the color science of Fujifilm's classic film stocks, like their black and white Acros. Something about connecting back to the roots of analog photography appealed to me. So far, the XT4 has been great, allowing me to learn the process of photography, both in my home space for photographing models in a controlled setting, to events, where lighting is not always reliable. Like I had hoped, the physical dials encouraged me to be more particular with the settings I was using, and how they were affecting the outcome. While I did not know it at the time, all of this experimentation and attunement to remnants of analog photography were priming me for my next step in photography, 35mm film!