Anyone knowing better forums?

Juan Valdenebro

Juan Valdenebro

Truth is beauty
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:D This forum is amazing...


A few days ago I asked for help trying to find (as it's happened to me for many years without finding any solution) any small 35mm manual lens -perhaps a Nikkor- for my Nikon bodies... I've never bought any of them before, especially because of the very common barrel distortion for most of the 35mm lenses designed for mirror cameras... And getting rid of distortion in 35mm lenses for SLRs means in general going huge: so I've never wanted any of the bigger Zeiss lenses... I own lots of primes for Nikon bodies, but none of them was 35mm, ever! The 35mm focal length has been covered in my case with zooms only... Distortion, of course, so why buy another distortion prime? Now I'm planning to teach my twins a bit of photography as they'll be three years old soon :), and I think for them it will be easier to see focus on an SLR instead of a RF, and I thought I'd prefer for “their” FE2 a small 35 instead of a fast 50... All this to mean, if getting a small 35 for Nikon has been in my head for years, now thinking of the kids, it had become for the last weeks a really important thing to me...


Well, I received some advice from all of you great forum members: thanks a lot everyone!... Then, I didn't check the thread for a few days because it didn't pop up again in the list of recent ones, and also because everything seemed said already, and it looked like -as always, year after year- that small 35 without distortion for SLRs, was just a dream, and nothing else... Today I checked the thread, and discovered new posts I had not read before, including a great post by cool RFF member Noserider, who has had many 35mm Nikkors... He talked about a small period of time during the late 70's when Nikon produced a 35 2.8 for a short time: one with an optical design that wasn't used for the other versions in the evolution of that FL design... The lens seemed to Noseriser (Chris) exactly what I wanted: small without distortion...


I felt so very happy to hear that! I sent him a PM saying thanks, and when I read his reply he gave me two links... One with the serial numbers list to check and be sure, because externally the lens is almost identical to other versions... Great link... And the other one was an article on which were the optical changes in the different 35 2.8 versions until getting to that precise lens... Internally it's the only one with 2 thick elements, one of them with concave and convex surfaces to correct distortion... Wow! Here are both links for Nikon SLR users interested:


http://www.photosynthesis.co.nz/nikon/serialno.html#35


http://imaging.nikon.com/history/nikkor/38/index.htm

As Chris said, looks like producing those thick components was not cheap, and people wanted to pay more only for faster 35's, so that great design was taken out of production for money reasons as 2.8 started to be stupidly considered slow... Finally, I was drooling and dreaming of finding that version, and I just saw one on ebay, and a moment ago, after checking its serial number, I bought it for... $95!!!

I had really looked for info on this on APUG and photo.net for years... Even the great mir.com.my pages are poor compared to this degree of experience, knowledge and good vibes...



Ain't RFF the sweetest thing?


Thanks Chris and everyone for the great help and patience with the things I care about! And many, many thanks from my little twins!



Cheers,


Juan
 
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Yes this is a great forum, Juan...lots of great folks here. Similarly, I have been wanting to find out more about LFI and whilst looking for some LFI magazines to go through, our friend dogberry came through with the last three for 2011!:)

It is little things like this that make the RFF experience the best. I am learning more with the simple gift of a few magazines than I could have imagined.

Thanks to all on RFF. :)
 
I looked at the latest national monthly photography magazine in my favourite camera store and looked at the prize-winning photographs. None would be picked in the Gallery picks here each week. There are some absolutely stellar photographs here each week, as well as all this friendly advice expert knowledge etc. And to think someone today wants to delete their account on RFF. Amazing.
 
It'll be interesting to see replies to your question, Juan!

Gotta say I doubt it anyone can come up with an overall better forum when it comes to 35mm and smaller. For LF, the Large Format Photography forum is pretty decent too, also lots of knowledgeable people and friendly mood. But, no rangefinders of course... ;)
 
Great post, Juan! Nice to hear that your stars aligned and your Nikon search ended happily!

Yes, RFF is an excellent resource. There are many people here who are simply passionate about photography and happy to share their knowledge.

BTW I have often found your posts to be very interesting and informative -- so the good vibes go both ways! :)

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I have been into photography for a long time. I used to think I knew a lot. Then I joined RFF. I am still learning I find. Certainly a wonderful place to come and share photography. Some of the non-photography threads are interesting as well, and for the most part, RFF members are able to express themselves without rancor.
 
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