Pentax K2 Experiments

For fun one day back in October I got out my K2 and Nikon FM and used the K2 to take a few shots. Here are the results.


Loading the FM with film



I also grabbed an empty milk jug.



Using the FM's mirror box like a periscope



I have no idea what this nor how it happened.

Kodak Vision 3 250D -- in Monochrome!

I picked up a 200-foot spool of Kodak Vision 250D a while back with the intent of developing it as black and white film. A friend on a photo forum I frequent uses this and loves it (and his photos are fabulous, by the way.) He also uses other Vision films, and all have great tonal range.

Anyway, some of the images here aren't perfect as I didn't get the remjet backing off perfectly, but you'll see that this film has a decent tonal range, especially considering that the camera I used was one I pieced together from multiple broken cameras (so it may not be perfect.)

Developing 250D is similar to nut not exactly like developing standard monochrome film. Firstly, there's a carbon black backing which will partially come off in the developer. So you may not want to reuse developer after running this stuff through it. I re-use the developer, though, and it's fine. The remjet settles out at the bottom of the bottle after a few days and as long as I don't use the dregs or agitate the fluid, the developer remains fairly clear.

The only hitch for me is temperature control. Color film needs higher temperatures than monochrome, so when I develop this, after the first full-minute of agitation, I keep it under a light hot water stream during the following three minutes. This works best with a metal film tank. The developer remains warm for the rest of the 10-11 minutes this film needs to develop.

That's my recipe, but you should practice variations. Also, leave a comment if you've home developed this before and have any suggestions.

During the rinse, I rinse the film once and the water comes out grayish. That's the remjet again. Then I fill it about half way and violently shake the film tank. The water comes out nearly black. A second time and the water is mostly clear, indicating that as much remjet as can be removed by water alone has been removed.

A standard fix of 10 minutes and the film is ready to wash. At the end of the wash, I run the film under a water stream and use my fingers to squeegee away the remaining remjet. This works well and if you do it correctly won't leave scratches on the emulsion. Here are some (sub-par) results.

Around Town with a Nikon FM

I was very excited to get these shots back from the Nikon FM. Since I did a little work on this camera to repair it, I had concerns as to if it would return good results or not. Fortunately, it did. The lens, a Nikkor-S 1:1.4 is the fastest lens I own and I've come to see the appeal of a fast lens. The viewfinder is bright and focusing is a lot easier than with a slow lens. Also, I forgot my notebook on Tuesday, so I don't have any aperture or shutter data to share. However, using 400 ISO film on a sunny day, I can say I had very few shots below f5.6.










1/10th of a second quicker on the shutter, and this could have been a great shot.


This shot was straight from the camera with no post-processing or cropping.


Another shot straight from the camera. This is a great birding lens.


A self-portrait. Focus wasa bit off, though.