Nikon F2 Style Icon - Yeah Baby

My Nikon F2

Imagine you only have one camera and you had to use it for the rest of your life. What camera would you choose?

Until quite recently that's how you had to chose your camera, unless you were wealthy enough to indulge yourself. Not long ago, just before digital cameras took off, camera manufacturers had production runs that lasted several years. In relative terms cameras were a lot more expensive than today, and you bought your camera knowing it would be a long term investment.

My first big investment in a camera was a Bronica that I used for social photography, weddings and portraits. My second big investment was a used Nikon F2. Both purchases required me to attend an interview at Lloyds bank, where I was lectured in the importance of regular repayments of the loan before putting my signature across a penny stamp with the Queen's head on it.

 Paris with a Nikon F2 using outdated (1998),  film - Photograph by Tim Irving

That was over 25 years ago, the Bronica was sold when I couldn't stomach another wedding, but the Nikon and I are still together, in fact I used it in Paris last week. And after 25 years and countless other cameras passing through my hands, I see no reason to abandon my Nikon.

The Nikon F2 is without doubt a design classic! It's evolutionary path can be traced back to 1957 and Nikon's SP rangefinder camera, which then evolved into the Nikon F in 1959, before finally evolving into the F2 - which was launched in 1971.

The Nikon F and F2 cameras became popular at a time of historic social change throughout the world. It was the chosen camera of photographers covering the Vietnam war and in particular Don McCullin. You can see Nikon F's being used at Woodstock. Dennis Hopper photographed the civil rights marches with one. Paul Simon put one in the lyrics of a song, and the icing on the cake, a Nikon F co-starred in the movie "Blow up" -the film that inspired Mike Myers to create Austin Powers! For a young man in the 60's and 70's owning an F or F2 was like owning a Fender Stratocaster, it made you attractive to women, a leader of men and it cured acne. I had to have one.

Austin Powers with his Nikon F2

The F2 is a totally mechanical camera. The meter requires a battery, but the camera itself will take photographs requiring only the power of your thumb to wind on the film. I don't know how many thousand films I've used over the years. In all conditions from dusty and hot to wet and cold, all over the world, the F2 has never missed a beat and it's never had a service apart from changing the foam light seals every 10 years, which takes 10 minutes to do youself.

As  a professional system camera, Nikon over-engineered the F2 and built it for life. As a system camera it can be modified to perform anything asked of it. The system comprises thousands of accessories and lenses. It was used by architecs, archiologists and astronauts (I could go on), in locations from the ocean floor to outer space. There's even an accessory called an endoscope that lets you take photographs inside the human body. Can you imagine your doctor asking "please touch your toes and relax, I'm just going to insert this Nikon F2 up your anus".

From an aesthetic point, the Nikon F2 is a fine looking camera, it's design was the product of gradual improvements over its 9 year lifespan and the end result is a handsome, workmanlike machine. It looks serious and has always received respectful glances, today it's considered cool and very trendy. It's the perfect accessory for the game of One-upmanship.
 
The camera that followed the F2 (the F3), was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro, the designer of De Lorean and Alfa Romeo cars. The F3 was a total re-design and Giugiaro added, for no good reason, a red stripe that runs down the handgrip. I'm not a design snob, but if I owned a Nikon F3 I'd have to cover up the red line.

I don't think you could improve the F2 without compromising some of its many qualities. A titanium lightweight version would be nice. My camera with a standard lens weighs 2lb 13oz and after a long day swinging from my neck I do sag, I wish it were lighter, but the Nikon F2 is what it is, I live with the weight. Austin Powers would argue that the weight of the camera makes it a good weapon, and he'd be right.

 David Hemmings in Blow-up

Free Photos

I've just read that Getty Images have forged an agreement with Flickr to allow any Flickr member to sell their photos via Getty. Flickr members can now choose to "Request a licence" link to their photo, and if someone wants to buy it, the link will put them in touch with a Getty representative who will negotiate a price. I can imagine millions of flickr members jumping on what looks like a gravy train and I think it will kill off a lot of working photographers.Getty will sell the Flickr images for anything from $5 to $400, but the photographer will receive only 30% from each sale.

I keep my eye on a few of the major agencies (Alami, Getty, Corbis), and I can tell you they are stuffed with very similar looking photographs. The price of photos is falling to a laughable level, some agencies are even offering free images.This is the consequence of digital technology which changes things, usually for the worse. Like MP3 music downloads everyone enjoys the products but there's no money to pay the artists.

Untitled Photograph

Untitled Portrait by Tim Irving

Night Photography in Paris

Cinema Reflections - Tim Irving

The rain is the photographer's friend, especially at night!

I didn't go to Paris with the intention of walking the streets at night, in the rain, but that's what I did on my first night.

I was drawn to the neon cinema signs in the residential streets away from the city centre. The French love their movies and in one area of the Latin Quarter I found three beautiful small cinemas on three parallel streets, no more than 100 metres from each other. Very traditional and very French.

Night photography without a tripod isn't easy, but it's possible. It involves looking for somewhere or something to balance the camera on. This is where the rain helps, with reflections, like the one above where I balanced the camera on the roof of a car. And as I've said before, the rain keeps people off the streets which is a big help when you're using parked cars as tripods.

As you can see each cinema is an explosion of neon and each one appears to be unique and independent. Do other cities have cinemas like those in Paris? I can only think or 3 or 4 neon signs in London that would be worth photographing.

Paris Photographs

Parisian Dancer - Photograph by Tim Irving

Paris was excellent. Lots of adventures and lots of photographs. It's been a few years since I last visited the city, from memory not much has changed, except that there's more tourists. The art scene is bigger than ever with too many exhibitions for anyone to see in a month let alone a long weekend.

We covered part of the city on the Velib (public bicycle rental), part on foot and long journeys on the metro. I had an ambitious schedule and a list of places to photograph, I managed to cover about 85% of the list which means another visit later in the year for a mopping up operation.

I've got a lot of film in the lab and I'll be sharing some of the photos with you over the coming weeks. But for the time being I'll leave you with the Parisian Dancer, I hope you like him.

Paris Weekend

Young Swimmer - Tim Irving

I'm off to Paris this Saturday for a few days, leaving at lunch time tomorrow. I've checked the weather forcast and it's heavy rain when I arrive. This is good news for me, photography in the wet is uncomfortable but it keeps the crowds off the streets and can produce the odd unique image, which is rare in Paris.

My (un-paid), assistant for the trip is a party animal who drinks hard and sleeps late. To avoid hostilities and sulks, I've decided it would be more productive to work sans assistance from 7am to 10am, then return to the hotel to wake the assistant and have breakfast together before allowing her to assist me for the rest of the day.

In preparing for the trip I had to hold off tidying the shed this week plus I've had a few other tasks to complete, one of which is messing around with the template of this blog to make it look a little more photo friendly - with the aim of showing the photographs larger. It's all down to changing the code of the stylesheet, I used to be good at this sort of thing but now I find it tedious and tidying the shed looks more appealing.

The photograph of the swimmer is from an on-going project that I hope conveys human joy in the form of motion. It's one of those projects where I'm waiting (sometimes for years), for the perfect, enthusiastic model. I hope you like the picture as I'll be using it and a few others to help me arrange the layout of this page. In the process if you see it aligned strangely or very large, or very small, or if the blog disapears, then you'll know what I'm trying to do.

As always, I wish you a happy and peaceful weekend. I'll be back on Tuesday.

Tim

The Chaos That Is My Shed

Like beach huts, sheds are very trendy this summer. Magazines have glossy articles illustraded with quaint shed interiors. There are shed blogs and web sites aplenty. Illustrious writers of the past and present have turned  sheds into studies, Roald Dhal and George Bernard Shaw to name drop two shed lovers.

It doesn't stop with writers. Small businesses are springing up in sheds around the world,  sheds are turning into breweries and pubs recording studios and machine shops. Whatever you can think of, someone is doing it in a shed as I write this. I personally know people who have immaculate, comfortable, cosy sheds, these shed people all have one thing in common, neatness.

Neatness is one of the many traits I wasn't blessed with. I surround myself in clutter and I find it difficult to organise even the smallest space, like my desk drawer, so shed life is not for me. In truth all I want a shed for is to store things like lawn mowers, ladders, paint, tools and the TV, and I'd like easy access to those items. This became an issue today when I was asked to store 4 paint tins.

The job of finding space for the tins turned into a farce as I balanced the 4 tins on larger tins, which were balancing themselves. Normally I would have left things and backed out (very carefully), but the next phase of the house starts soon and I'll need to get access to tools and materials reasonably quickly, so I spent an hour organising the shed interior.

It's a horrible job that I'm not fit for. The photos above of the shed after one hours effort. Tomorrow I'm going back in there, to clear the work bench and by the end of the week I hope to show you a shed to be proud of.