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| Nikon D780 + Speedlight SB-400 |
Nikon Speedlight SB-400 (DSLR)
Showing posts with label SB-16. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SB-16. Show all posts
Thursday, October 9, 2025
Flash Photography
Flash Photography
Nikon Speedlight SB-800
The idea behind this page is to track my progress. I understand that manual film camera flash photography is challenging. I want to own the night yet I am challenged to see at night. My focus screen is clear, not lit, if it’s dark out, so is the screen. My exposure indicators are too. The F3 has a LED readout for shutter speed that can be illuminated with the push of a button but not needed when I use a flash, X mode is the setting I choose on the shutter dial or in the case of daytime flash fill, I can use A, P or manual. The FE2 has a red LED in the viewfinder that illuminates when the flash is ready.
At night or indoors with no light, the flash provides the light for film exposure, in low light, the flash will fill in to further expose the film. All of my cameras both film and digital do not have built in flash. I have to use existing light and or a flash attached to the camera.
There are many considerations when I choose to shoot film at night. Daytime film is typically 100-400 ASA. Film ASA varies from 50 for bright day to 3200 for low light photography. For flash photography I use the same film as I will for daytime photography, the flash provides the light.
Light from a flash is bright and harsh.
My learning curve is too!
But I am having fun with it.
Anyway, as I get better, I’ll track my progress here.
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| Nikon D780 + Nikon 16mm f/2.8 Fisheye-NIKKOR AF-D + Nikon Speedlight SB-800 |
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Nikon F3 + Speedlight SB-11
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Highlighted Links are no longer in the inventory
Sunday, August 3, 2025
Monday, June 30, 2025
Nikon F3
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| My 30+ year old F3 with the MD-4 motor drive |
s/n 1801954
(P9026297 - made January or February 1994)
MD-4
s/n 431016
I started taking pictures in high school. My father had gifted me a Canon TX, a manual 35mm camera and I believe it had a 50mm lens. I learned about shutter speeds, aperture and ASA/ISO. I used that camera to take pictures of my skateboarding friends, and it was so basic that I could set the exposure and focus, hand it to non-photography friends and they would take pictures of me too! My second camera was a Canon point and shoot that I used while in the Army. It was light weight, durable and took pretty good pictures. I hung it off my hang glider with a long bulb release and would take selfies of me soaring.
Once I was out of the Army, I made friends with photographers and almost all of them used Nikon 35mm cameras and Nikkor lenses. Their photographs where phenomenal and my photos were ok as I used a Pentax point and shoot camera at that time.
Recently I had about a hundred slides scanned, pictures that an old friend took for a web site we were making. All those old images were shot with the Nikon F3. They were so good! It just blew me away even compared to today’s digital photography. A metal box of 25-year-old negatives sitting in an outdoor storage room, decades of summers in a plastic bin with 120-degree temps and the negatives survived and the scans looked great.
I started talking with photographer friends (Chris and Brooks) you know who you are, and both said get the F3 or a FE2. I bought the FE2, ran a couple of rolls through it, got it CLA and ended up getting the aperture ring on the body repaired and now it takes excellent photographs as it should.
I bought an F3 from a Japanese seller on eBay, and it arrived dead in the box. I approached locals with F3s, but they were just so dirty, and the LCD was fading, probably from being stored outside in the AZ heat. I finally found my copy from an honest gentleman and cleaned it up, took it to Tempe Camera to get checked out and now I have several rolls through it, and it is absolutely my favorite camera.
Recently, I sent it to International Camera Technicians (Jim) to have the LCD light (red button) repaired. I want to take some night photos, and the light is too dim and the button too hard to push. I got my F3 back and here it is and right now, it’s clean, the LCD is brighter and the light works as it should. Since then, I’ve been dragging my Lowepro bag around with the F3 and my lenses through the North American Southwest taking pictures of petroglyphs and landscapes. In a couple of weeks, I’ll take it to the beach in Southern California and shoot seascapes there.
Below are a few photographs from my F3.
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