Bonjour tout le monde! This is my first article for a shop outside of Japan. I certainly miss shopping at the amazing shops and huge department stores of Japan so I was happy to find a shop that sells used photography equipment. Of course, the shops here will not surpass the quality of what you will see in Japan but this one is close enough. Please join me as I introduce to you one of the more established businesses in town, servicing the community since 1999.
Introduction:
Ciné Monde is a not-so-little shop located in a very hip part of town. It’s operated by Mike, who is somewhat of a celebrity among the local photographers. It’s one of the few camera shops in this part of the province and I was told that the items here move fast. I saw what they have and it’s decent compared to what I see in Japan, there are some interesting and rare stuff here, too.
This is the front of the shop. It’s hard to miss this place if you are walking but it may elude you when you’re driving because they do not have a big sign outside facing the traffic.
Hello, everybody! Many people today do not recall the glory days of the cassette tape. When I was young it was the only way we could affordably own a record that’s portable enough to be used as audio entertainment media for our cars. Before it we only have radios and we only listened to things that the DJ would play. Owning a cassette player in your meant that you can play whatever you wanted to listen. It was cheap, small and fairly reliable despite hassle of the tape being tangled inside the player. It took a very long time for the compact disc to be perfected which replaced the cassette eventually. There were many trial-and-errors, you’re not supposed to run fast when on uneven road or your song will skip since buffering wasn’t implemented yet and the inconvenience of having to store your CDs at the trunk or under the seats were annoying. Despite those setbacks, early in-car CD systems showed us the way to the future until the technology has been perfected in the late 90s. Today, I will show you something that reminded me of those days. It came in late because the established product was so reliable that it was difficult to replace but as soon as people had mastered the technology this soon became somewhat obsolete, being only remembered as a transition.
Introduction:
The AF-Nikkor 20mm f/2.8 came out in 1989 and lasted only shy of 5 years in production until it was replaced by the new but very similar AF-Nikkor 20mm f/2.8D. It’s the autofocus version of the popular Nikkor 20mm f/2.8 Ai-S, which outlived it by many years. Its introduction was somewhat late for an AF-Nikkor, probably because of how complicated the mechanisms inside of it are. It has the came CRC system found in the Nikkor 20mm f/2.8 Ai-S. You will see later how intricate the interior of barrel is and how clever the solutions are. Many people thought that this lens and the later AF-Nikkor 20mm f/2.8D are identical apart from the exterior but they’re not really exactly the same in terms of construction internally, with the later lens having more modern characteritics.
While the constructions is all-plastic, at least in the exterior, the lens has a solid feel when held. It may rattle somewhat when you shake it, maybe a little bit more than the usual AF-Nikkor but it’s not flimsy at all. Like all Nikkors of its kind it has a lock for the aperture ring so you can lock it at its minimum aperture of f/22 when using it with autofocusing Nikons. You’ll get an error if it was not setup like this. The focusing ring is of the later type since this was introduced a bit later compared to its contemporaries. It isn’t as wide as I’d like but it’s not pathetic at all.
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Richard Haw's Classic Nikon Repair and Review 