Retro With Canon And Nikon

Some events are more fun in retrospect than they were at the time - the Cuban Missile Crisis and a Lady Gaga concert come to mid -  and this also applies to some equipment. Anyone who has ever serviced a car with a Lucas electrical system or a Holley four-barrel carburator will know what I mean.


The same might be said for two new little secondhand offerings in the shop. We've just taken in two little film-era camera outfits that took themselves very seriously at the time but have arrived at  a point in time when they are altogether fun - not hard work.

The first is a Canon EOS 5 film camera with a 28-105 Canon lens and a Canon 540EZ flash. Tough little beast, all-rounder lens, and a flash that can illuminate a decent area of the surroundings. $ 300 the set.

The second is a Nikon F 801 film camera with a 35-70 lens and a 70-210 lens. They were a popular lens combo in the 90's and for good reason - they covered the most used angles of view for most people. WE all bought something similar and shot travel, weddings, and short sport with them. $ 250 the set.

Both of these sets are in excellent condition and carry our 3-month warranty.

Both of them are the IDEAL entry for someone into 35mm film work, as their lenses are perfectly compatible with the Canon and Nikon digital camera systems respectively.

Film ain't going away. Our fridge bears witness to that. Good film labs are still all around town. You can shoot confidently with these cameras and have negatives and slides that won't disappear into a dead hard drive. Or with a mistaken push of a mouse button. Ask me about the job that had to be recovered from the client as finished prints ( " Just to assure quality control, of course. Have 'em back to you in a coupla hours. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along there." )

Damn right there was nothing to see. I'd deleted the NEF's, the PSD's and the jpeg's in one fell swoop and needed to scan back the paper prints to get the images back in the system. Read and learn, Grasshopper...