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LETTER OF THE WEEK
I loved your Nikon Zf experience in Shanghai (AP 27 February). It was like reading a wonderful bedtime story for Nikon aficionados, about a magical dream machine for the good guys.
Isn’t she a beauty just to look at? I instantly fell in love with the Nikon FM2 on her introduction in 1982 and managed to purchase my first FM2, together with four fast prime lenses, in 1984. An absolute dream to use in just about any situation (at the time) and especially in all weathers. With the FM2 I was confident I would come home with the bacon every time.
Just looking at the photograph of the Z f, together with your honest article, makes my heart ache with utter passion. But at the age of 75 and having been blissfully married for over five years to my beautiful and faithful Nikon D850, I will just have to pine from a distance and dream.
Down the plughole
Mike Crawford’s Film on a Budget feature (AP 13 February) brought back happy memories of the countless hours I spent in my cosy garage darkroom many years ago. But it was also a stark reminder of just how many gallons of noxious chemicals I poured down the drain after each darkroom session, without a thought for the environment.
I regularly used the Ilford Cibachrome prints-from-slides process and I recall that the bleach/fix solution needed some sort of neutralising powder added before it was discarded. Like many, I was hooked after the life-changing experience of watching an image appear on a sheet of paper in a dish of developer. So much so that my wife called my darkroom my ‘second home’. When I later joined a camera club many members experimented with various darkroom toning methods that involved highly toxic chemicals which were also poured away with total disregard for their toxicity.
I would hope that darkroom users today are far better educated about chemical disposal. But I still shudder when I think of just how much chemical waste I casually dumped in the 20-odd years I had my darkroom.
