I got my first Nikon camera, a Nikkormat, in the mid-60s. The 50 mm lens was pretty fast, around f1.4, and bursting with excitement I dashed off to the San Francisco Zoo and shot a roll of Kodachrome. Or so I thought. Turned out I'd not threaded the film properly into the take-up spool. Feeling dumb's no fun. My next lens was the 105mm portrait lens, one of Nikon's all-time best, (f2.5) followed by the so-called Micro-Nikkor macro lens (f3.5) - another of their all-time best lenses. I used the 105mm almost all the time for landscapes - I live in the Rocky Mountain west and shoot "up and down the spine of the Rockies," (quoting myself on an earlier website), where big things aren't usually close at hand. Mountains, for example, or neat stuff in Monument Valley, say, or Canyon de Chelly.
I ended up with four Nikkormat bodies and several more lenses, including a 30 year old Nikon 85mm - 250mm zoom (f4 to f16) - a huge honking thing that weighs over two pounds. The polarizer alone cost around eighty-five bucks. I was terrific at composition but terrible with exposures so it felt like most of my good work was accidental more than planned.
In the late 60s I took several courses from an irascible Missoula bartender named Lee Nye (a graduate of the Brooks School of Photography). All our work was in b & w, Tri-X pushed to ASA 6400 and developed in our own little darkrooms according to a formula he'd invented. Cropping in the darkroom had everything to do with teaching me to see photographically, for which I've been eternally grateful. Thanks, Lee!
And now? I have a small boat-load of Nikon stuff for sale. If interested, drop me an e-.
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