Many years ago, when I was given my first analog SLR camera as a gift from my uncle, I got my interest for photography sparked immediately. This was a time where digital cameras weren’t a thing, and Kodak was a company as famous as Coca-Cola to me and my friends. If I talk to children and teenagers today, they might not even have heard of Kodak as a company.
My first SLR camera was a Nikon F60 and with it came a Voigtländer Skopar 28-80mm f3,5 lens. This isn’t by any means the sharpest or best lens in the world, but at the time I was given this package, it was my first try of a real camera with a proper lens on it. I was indeed very happy with it and I shot dusins of rolls of film with it. Usually Fuji C200 or Kodak Gold 200, with the occasional Agfa-film. From that time, I have changed cameras, medias and formats many times, but I have still kept the F60 and this lens. Sadly, the F60 does not work anymore, but I do have a Nikon F80, and I decided to give the old lens a try.
This idea struck me after I tried this lens on my D750, and I was rather underwhelmed by the results I got from that. I then figured it was worth giving it a go, once again with a film and see if it would work.
I then figured that I would take another old friend out for a spin as well. The Ilford Delta 400. I have never really got the love for this film because I often tend to prefer the look of HP5+ to the look of the Delta 400. This however, doesn’t mean that the Delta 400 isn’t a brilliant film, and since I was going in rather bright conditions, I figured the finer grain structure would make my images shine more in the highlights. I also went for a development cycle in ID-11 to really give it the finest grain possible with the developers I currently own.
I went mainly for what I refer to as «small landscape» for this shoot. I define most of my landscape photography work into the two categories «small» and «big» landscape. A big landscape photo is a view, a mountain, a lovely lake and so on. Small landscape are more details and small snippets of wheat my surroundings look like. This category is often easier to find and work on in the East of Norway where I live, where most of the landscape is forest and rather flat areas.
All in all, I had an enjoyable little outing with my old lens and the F80. It is clear though, that my eyes for lenses have changed somewhat over the years, and I am not blown away by the sharpness I see in these images, but it could also be down to my rather «simple» scan process for these images and my general preference for medium format negatives.
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