Friday, May 29, 2015

The first thing I noticed...

One point for the Nikon F5 over the EOS-1N: I was pedaling through Broad Ripple yesterday after lunch, getting a workout with the big Canon on a strap around my neck, shooting a test roll through the camera. The test roll was some FujiFilm 200 that Amazon sells cheap in 4-packs of 24-exposure rolls.

Out in front of Broad Ripple Vintage, I snapped a photo of some interesting colored neon and *WHIRRRRRR*. That was it. That was exposure number 24. You're done with this roll, kiddo.

The Canon reads the DX code on DX coded film and, if it says it's a 24-exposure roll, then 24 exposures is what you're gonna get. There might be some way to override this in the camera's profusion of custom submenus, but I haven't checked in the camera's 120-page instruction manual to see. I think there was a hack we used to do with tape, too, but it was so long ago that I used to do this stuff...

The F5, on the other hand, will let the starving artist eke out those extra couple frames you can usually get on any film roll. Further, at the end of a roll, it merely flashes "End", and gives you the choice of either initiating the motorized rewind by pushing the right combination of buttons, or saving the electrons and noise and using the classic manual rewind crank atop the camera.

Because the Canon cut me off at shot number twenty-four, when I pedaled around the corner, I had to paw my Nikon P7000 out of my pocket, stab the "ON" button, listen as it warbled its musical bootup chime and whirred its little servo-powered lens out and opened its little lens cover, in time for...

Drove right out of frame as the camera sluggishly responded to my frantic "YOU TAKE PICTURE NOW!" commands.
Which is not a slam on the little P7000; it comes to life pretty quickly for a digicam; if I'd had it in hand instead of starting with it in the pocket, I'd have gotten the shot. But if I'd still had that couple of bonus frames in the camera around my neck...