Pete Askew
Admin
My original choice of Nikon as my 35mm system of choice was pretty much driven by chance. As I've said elsewhere, my first stills camera was an Instamatic bought for me Christmas when I was about 14 years old. I was getting interested in photography but unfortunately my parents didn't quite 'get' what sort of ideas I had (my mother was still using her trusty, pre-war box Brownie): I'm sad to say I hardly used it (and my mother later adopted it). But then I got an after-school job and started gazing in the window of the camera shop in town. And in there was a very interesting looking, secondhand cine camera which I determined was to be mine! And so after saving up, I managed to buy it along with a pair photo-floods, some filters and some film. And the attraction? Slow motion shots of insects in flight, especially hover flies around flowers. That and a bit of stop-frame animation (with a friend) kept me interested and satisfied my photographic ambitions for several years until I discovered the joy of old English motorcycles!
So back to the Nikon. My partner and I had bought a waterproof, submersible Nikon compact camera to carry around on the bike (not only could it put up with getting soaked on the bike, you could also wash it in the sink with some detergent to get the wax from the jackets off!). One of our friends had moved to Kenya and was working there as a teacher for a couple of years and we decided to visit him for a month. And of course there were all those interesting animals and landscapes. So a more suitable camera was needed. A trip to Jessops in Reading lead to me buying a secondhand Nikon FE (plus a 105mm f1:2.5 Nikkor and Sigma 600 f1:8.0 catadioptric lenses): I still have both the camera and the lenses and the FE is still one of my favourite cameras (matched needle metering - wonderful!). And when we returned, having re-kindled my interest in image making, I started buying the odd lens every now and then and learned more about Nikon over the years. And one of the things I learned was that those lovely lenses were compatible with every SLR that Nikon had made. And do you know what? They still are! And that is what I like so much about Nikon - backward compatibility. In fact, when I think about it, that is also what characterises all of my photographic systems.
To illustrate this, below is an early 70's Nikkor-S 55mm f1:1.2 mounted on a Nikon F of the same period. And below that, the same lens is mounted on the current, professional film camera from Nikon, the F6 (represented the first and, probably, the last of the Nikon 'professional' film cameras). I could equally have fitted it to a D800. Backward and forward compatibility. Wonderful.
Nikkor-S 55mm f1:1.2 mounted on a Nikon F
Nikkor-S 55mm f1:1.2 mounted on a Nikon F6
So back to the Nikon. My partner and I had bought a waterproof, submersible Nikon compact camera to carry around on the bike (not only could it put up with getting soaked on the bike, you could also wash it in the sink with some detergent to get the wax from the jackets off!). One of our friends had moved to Kenya and was working there as a teacher for a couple of years and we decided to visit him for a month. And of course there were all those interesting animals and landscapes. So a more suitable camera was needed. A trip to Jessops in Reading lead to me buying a secondhand Nikon FE (plus a 105mm f1:2.5 Nikkor and Sigma 600 f1:8.0 catadioptric lenses): I still have both the camera and the lenses and the FE is still one of my favourite cameras (matched needle metering - wonderful!). And when we returned, having re-kindled my interest in image making, I started buying the odd lens every now and then and learned more about Nikon over the years. And one of the things I learned was that those lovely lenses were compatible with every SLR that Nikon had made. And do you know what? They still are! And that is what I like so much about Nikon - backward compatibility. In fact, when I think about it, that is also what characterises all of my photographic systems.
To illustrate this, below is an early 70's Nikkor-S 55mm f1:1.2 mounted on a Nikon F of the same period. And below that, the same lens is mounted on the current, professional film camera from Nikon, the F6 (represented the first and, probably, the last of the Nikon 'professional' film cameras). I could equally have fitted it to a D800. Backward and forward compatibility. Wonderful.
Nikkor-S 55mm f1:1.2 mounted on a Nikon F
Nikkor-S 55mm f1:1.2 mounted on a Nikon F6
lol
