So a funny thing sometimes happens when people find out you are getting into shooting and developing film. If they have a bunch of old cameras shoved in a closet somewhere, sometimes – if you’re lucky – they end up on your desk at work. I’m a lucky guy, as this happened to me.
A coworker (my boss, actually) gifted me a Nikon FM, an FM2, and a selection of lenses and accessories that once belonged to his father. This gave me plenty of things to experiment with, but I missed having access to aperture priority mode, so I soon procured a Nikon FE2 that would happily accept all of the same lenses.
Finally, I was shooting, developing, and scanning 100% on my own. I still had have much to learn, but that’s what the internet is for. It’s around this time that I started to see more photos per roll that I would consider keepers. Good enough to hang around the office/house anyway. Note that I don’t attribute this to the gear exactly, but having so many new toys to play with kept me invested enough that I started shooting every chance I got. I started going on photo walks during my lunch hour, and even joined a local photography club.
My color processing greatly improved during this time as well, much attributed to picking up a Darkroom Helper from Pira.mx.
Eventually, I settled on the FE2 and an all-in-one Nikon AF NIKKOR 24-85mm f/2.8 lens that also sports decent macro focus. It’s big and heavy, but having it with me means not having to carry multiple lenses on the days when I just want to play and be ready for anything.
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