Some photos taken with Nikon SP and W-Nikkor.

[goliathus]

Last weekend, I met a friend who has a Nikon SP(He found it from his grandfather's chest!! 😱 ) , So I borrowed his SP for a while, and here are some photos taken with it. (Also including my new friend 2.8cm/3.5 photos)

First of all, as you guys mentioned several times in this forum, SP's RF patch of my friend's looks faint too(with cloth shutter curtains and serial started with 62~). I compared it to my S2 and S2's RF patch looks more contrast than it.

But I noticed that an internal 28/35 finder was truly comfortable! the finder images were little small but enough to check a frame and it showed perfectly same frame image with original external 3.5cm and VC 2.8cm finder.

So....I'd like to get it ASAP :bang:

Anyway, here it goes.

Nikon SP / W-Nikkor C 2.8cm 3.5 / Fuji trebi 100C

Nikon SP / W-Nikkor C 3.5cm 1.8 / Fuji trebi 100C

Nikon SP / W-Nikkor C 2.8cm 3.5 / Fuji trebi 100C

 

[payasam]

All I can say is that in darkening the sky to bring out the clouds, the foreground buildings have been made too dark. Lens performance seems excellent.

 

[David Murphy]

All I can say is that in darkening the sky to bring out the clouds, the foreground buildings have been made too dark. Lens performance seems excellent.

Yes, one needs to open up 1-2 stops for strongly backlit scenes -- old rule-of-thumb. The lens performance can still be ascertained however, and it looks great.

 

[jonmanjiro]

On a different note, it looks like the cloth shutter of your friend's SP has no holes in it 😉

The serial number on all vintage SPs starts with 62xxxxx (seven digits in total) so you really have to look at the last 5 digits to work out its age.

Here's a rough list (I don't know how exact these numbers are, but they're pretty close).

00001 - 13999 - early run cloth shutter models

14000 to 23??? - late run titanium shutter models

30001 to 32??? - addtional run of 994 titanium shutter models manufactured from 1964 to 1965

There are exceptions though. I saw a cloth shutter SP with a 6224xxx serial number recently. I'd never seen a 24xxx series SP before, even with a titanium shutter, so the top plate may have been a replacement job with a spare part from the factory.

As mentioned by others, anecdotal evidence (as found on RFF😀) suggests that the later SPs with the titanium shutters have better focus patches.

 

[Ronald M]

Amazing how little advancement there was from 1960 to 1990 when Leica started with the APO lenses. Thoseare wonderful images

 

[VinceC]

Thanks for posting. The SP with W-Nikkor 2.8cm f/3.5 is one of my favorite combinations. I tend to use my SP for black-and-white work and my S3 for color. No particular reason ...

Also, I disagree with the exposure critique posted above -- on two counts: 1st, with that kind of picture, it's better to expose for the sky rather than have a picture dominated by a washed-out sky; 2nd, it looks about right on my screen. It can be very challenging to critique exposure on the Internet, because everyone's monitors are adjusted for different brightness levels. On some computers I've used, the background here on RFF is nearly complete black. On my current monitor, it is middle gray, at least a stop and a half lighter than the black in the Robert White ad and the dark parts of the RFF logo at the top of the screen.

 

[goliathus]

Thanks for good advices and nice another 2.8cm photos!

As Vince mentioned in his comment, I wanted to emphasize the sky and cloud.
when I took the first one, sunlight was so strong, and forest and small buildings
were darkened by shadow of cloud at that time.

Also You can see the vinetting on the top right corner. usually 4-corner vinetting can be disappeared by just 1 step down, but in this photo, I used a thick PL filter. I guess it could cause some heavy vinetting on this picture. 🙁

By the way, I usually use my R2S for b&w work esphecially indoor photography, because shutter shock and shutter release button tension are worse than S2, it can make more hand blur. So I used to use ISO 400 b&w film with my R2S.