Yes , new lens . I pulled the trigger and bought a lens which in all honesty I do not need. It is older Nikkor 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6 D. I know, I know. Reviews are not very favorable for this lens. What caught my eye is the flexibility of this zoom. It’s going from wide to short telephoto, amazing right? I thought I give it a go and save myself carry around many lenses. Also i paid £72 which i think was a good price. After it arrived, I loaded my Nikon Fm2 with Ilford HP5+ 400. Then I decided to take it with me to the hike I was planning in Snowdonia. National park. Great to be out with the camera… (and a “new” lens) of course ….
My friend Chris suggested the route and we left Nottingham 4:30 am in heavy rain. When we reach the car park in Wales beautiful sunshine was greeting us. It was such a nice feeling to actually see the sun for the first time in 2 months 🙂
The walk
First stop was Llyn Stwlan reservoir just above the village . It is actually a power station. Pretty amazing. (see the header shot above). From there it was up and up until we reached Moelwyn Mawr. That was the highest point then back and up to Moel-yr-Hydd.
Then the best part started we reached top parts of the famous Cwmorthin quarry. Amazing place ! It was a slate quarry west of the village of Tanygrisiau, north Wales. Quarrying on the site started in 1810. In 1860 it was connected to the Ffestiniog Railway. In 1900 it was acquired by the nearby Oakeley quarry and the two were connected underground. it closed along with Oakeley in 1970 . There was small-scale working in the 1980s and 1990s, and the mine finally closed in 1997. Lots of history
The lens
What a place to be out with the camera… (and a “new” lens). Right ? Oh yeah a new lens . How was it?
Well, build quality of the lens is excellent, I did not expect anything less from Nikon. Lens feels solid and all moving parts are nice and smooth. Nikon Fm2 is a full manual camera. I can’t comment on the speed of auto-focusing. Still, I expect it to be perfectly acceptable.
I processed the film in 510 Pyro 1:100,20C for 8:25 minutes. Here are the results. I can see that corners are soft. The shots could be a tad sharper. However, I think the results are very good considering I was carrying only one lens instead of three. Have a look at few examples in the gallery below:
What do you think? Good, bad, waste of money? Let me know in the comments below,