Enter FM2!

Yup, that's right. Bought a second-hand Nikon FM2 last Monday, along with a 50mm f/1.8 lens, also a second-hand. Both still in a good shape, though there's a little problem with the lens, which I'd tell later on this post. Anyway, the wishlist has now been fulfilled. :D Went straight to the old campus from the shop, to find out there's an expo over there. Loaded with a TMAX 100, I started to try out the new toy... The handling is really good, the camera feels just right on my hands. With the 50mm attached, it's pretty compact. Which is good when you don't want to attract too much attention. Still have to get used to the metering method though...


Sasha tried a few shots too:


She mentioned about her sight being slightly decreasing lately, and judging from the last frame, I guess it *is* about time she visits an optician. ;p

You might say my shots aren't exactly in-focus either, which is true. The reason for this was... f/1.8. Yup, fucking wide open. Why didn't I use a smaller aperture, you ask? So here's the story:

I didn't notice it earlier at the shop, or when I took the above pictures (well I used it on an analog, there's no way I could see the results right away), but when I got home and tested the lens on the D50, I found out something weird... I got pretty much the same shallow DOF no matter what aperture I used. I thought that it couldn't be true, so I made another test. I took a few frames with the same ISO and speed, but with varying apertures. If everything's okay, not only the DOF, but the exposures should have also been different right? But guess what, THEY WERE ALL THE SAME! Gaaaargh. And that was when I realized that the aperture blades weren't moving when I turned the aperture ring around... So all that day, while I thought I'd been using different kind of apertures, in reality I had actually only used f/1.8... @_@

Wide apertures are cool (with all the nice bokeh and whatnot, mmmm), but they can be pretty hard to handle in manual focusing. Even when you look at the viewfinder. I thought I had nailed each and every pictures above, but as you can see they're rather soft. Gotta practice a lot more. But the focus on this one is pretty dead-on, I say:

And aside from technicality, I also love how they all look... well, cute. ^_^

So anyway, the next day I returned to the shop and they agreed to repair it without additional cost. Gonna take about a week though. So what to do with an analog body without a lens? Well there's the 18-55... Though it's clearly stated in the manual book that the lens isn't recommended for use with a 35mm SLR camera, I tried it anyway out of curiosity. I thought as long as there's a lightmeter it wouldn't be too hard to make a good exposure without knowing the aperture. Boy was I wrong. x( Half a roll with that lens was ruined. I intend to use the kit lens with the FM2 again though, just because the 18mm without a crop factor is just the shit!! Albeit the heavy vignetting.

I haven't hit the street for quite a while, and since tomorrow we're entering Ramadhan, I might not be able to walk around too much either. :( My last street hunting didn't give anything decent. Just one frame that I really like. Pardon me for the bad quality scan. Ricoh XR500 + 35-70 + Lucky SHD 100. Oh, and this one was a hipshot.


That's all for now!