Richard Haw's Classic Nikon Repair and Review

Hello, everybody! We are going to continue with our Autofocus Helios-44 project and you will now see the current evolution of this project lens. I have many responsibilities so I’m not going to work on this project regularly so updates will take some time but here it is!

If you recall in part 1, we tried using a zoom lens as the donor body so that we can use its zoom cam for macro mode but this failed miserably because there is no space inside for the huge objective of the Helios-44! While it was working OK, I decide that I want to have a better solution for this so I found a junk AF-Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 for little money to use as the donor body. I think that this is a better solution because f/1.8 isn’t too far from the f/2 maximum aperture of Helios-44. This will help us with the EXIF data. I doubt that there’s any difference the way the camera will meter with this lens because it’s a preset aperture lens so the camera will always meter though the lens in whatever aperture it was set.

I get plenty of stares from people who see this lens. It looks like the usual AF-Nikkor but there’s something strange with this lens which demands you to take a closer look. It’s like going to Thailand for a vacation, you will have to check if the woman you are hitting on’s the real deal and not a “kathoey”. The “farang” will fall for this but not us. I have a saying: Transvestites: more than meets the eye. A Helios in disguise, how novel is that!? More

Hello, everybody! Today, I will be covering the 9th Shinjuku Classic Camera Bazaar! This is usually held around Summer by the Association for Promotion of Camera Commerce. It is sort of like a guild of some sort with members from all around Japan. There are others but this and the I.C.S. (Import Camera Society) are the bigger ones and they both organize bazaars like this in Tokyo. For a gear nut and “tinkerbug”, these bazaars are some of the bigger highlights for the year as far as photography is concerned. I hope you can join me!

Here is a panorama from my iPhone. The participants are all members of the same guild. They have been holding this event for a couple of years now and some come from distant prefectures like Osaka and Nagoya just to participate in this bazaar. If there is a heaven for a camera collector, then it will probably look like this and everything for sale is cheap or given away for free. How nice is that? I would prefer this to the virgins in the afterlife! More

Hello, everybody! How are you today? I got 2 days off from my work so I have a little bit of time for myself and my family. I used my free time to clean and work on some of my new junk acquisitions. I have been getting questions and requests to do a series on this and so I took the time to make on this morning. I hope that you will like this.

Introduction:

Many of my readers are also in the same habit of “recycling” old and junk gear. This is a very good habit because you are not only saving money by buying used/junk gear but it’s also sustainable. Old or junk doesn’t always mean bad; in fact, with the right techniques you can restore these back to decent operation! This is what I do with my junk cameras.

Our specimen for this article is going to be the amazing Nikon FE2 camera. If you look at the picture-in-picture, you will see that the camera is filthy! I don’t know what these are but they look like some fungi/dust to me. It has scratches here and there but no big dings that are serious enough to prevent the camera from operating properly. The 6000 yen tag is not cheap by Japanese standards when it comes to junk cameras of this kind but I got it from a brick-and-mortar shop so I’m OK with this. They need to pay the rent and salaries, too! Buying from online sellers is generally cheaper because the overhead is cheaper.
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Hello, everybody! How are you today? I just took the family out to a Korean restaurant. I know that there are a couple of cheap eats there and I thought it would also be good for the family to see the other cheap deals at the vicinity. There are many things that we can get for cheap and being cheap doesn’t always have to be bad. In fact, some cheap things are just as good or even better than the more expensive things just like Stolichnaya when you compare it to the top-shelf vodkas. Today, I’m going to introduce to you a cheap and very good Nikkor that many people started out with and many pros used these,too.

Introduction:

Today, we will talk about a lens that almost every Nikon photographer owned because it was cheap and it exceeded expectations, the AF-Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens! This lens was a big hit for Nikon because of its great price/performance ratio. The lens is “Made in China” and it lowered the production cost even more. I will show you what’s inside this thing so you will know how and why Nikon kept its cost down.

The AF-Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 is the original “plastic fantastic” lens for Nikon users back in the days. Many photographers started with one, built their portfolio with one and made a lot of money using one. They are also very easily sold soon after as they usually lust for a faster f/1.4 lens so these were very plentiful back then and maybe even to this day.

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Hello, everybody! I got back into smoking again after quitting it for 5 years. It has always been on-and-off for me but this time, I’m using the “heat-not-burned” type where tobacco is heated instead of burned. The most popular one sold here is the IQOS. It’s by far the most popular model because of the cost and availability, it is not the best option so mine is now up for sale. In the long run, you end up spending more on tobacco because of bad design decisions made by Philip Morris. This is what I would call “false economy”, you are given an impression that you save plenty of money but at the end you actually spend lots more. That’s the reason why GLO, is slowly kicking the IQOS out of the market. It’s much better designed and is the best option in the “heat-not-burned” market. I’m not endorsing you to start smoking but instead I want you to quit! While we’re on the topic of economy, I will show you a good lens that’s hyped-up as being inexpensive but is really going to cost you more in the long run, a good example of false economy.

Introduction:

Today, we’re going to look at the Nikon 100mm f/2.8E lens! This lens belongs to the cheap Series E line of lenses. Series E lenses were made by Nikon for the budget conscious. They really had great value way back when they were introduced with the cheap Nikon EM. If you guessed that the “E” in Series E means “economy” then you got it right. The Series E line and the Nikon EM were made for ease of use, light weight and economy. This family of Nikon products were aimed at women who are fussy at the size or weight of their gear and ease of operation is important. Now, before branding me as sexist remember that this was the late ’70s. Maybe society is indeed sexist because cameras are still designed to satisfy these parameters today and much of the mirrorless segment shows this (ie: Fuji X-A line).

Series E lenses are generally compact and lite, the Nikon 100mm f/2.8E is no exception. Its weight is almost half of the equivalent Nikkor, is just as small as some small primes and was decently made to satisfy Nikon’s marketing and accountants. They’re pretty good but not Nikkor-good. More

Foreword:

Below are lists of the articles that I made throughout the years. I made this so my readers will have a convenient page to look for my articles without having to Google anything for what they need from my blog.

The articles are arranged in several categories for easy browsing. I hope that this will be useful for you. I will update this page every time I post something new. Thanks, Ric. More

Hello, everybody! It is Nikon’s 100th anniversary today! The company was founded with the merger of several smaller companies and it was called Nippon Kogaku which means Japan Optical literally. There are milestones throughout Nikon’s 100 years of continuous operation and I will tackle some of them here in my blog. You may have already seen my Nikon Museum series which I began a few months ago along with the related articles and this is just a part of that. I hope that you will enjoy this series, Nikon lover or not.

Introduction:

Today, I am going to show you a historically significant lens as far as the Japanese optics industry is concerned and that’s no other than the old but venerable Nikkor-P.C 8.5cm f/2! The Nikkor-P.C 8.5cm f/2 was perfected and sold during the post-war reconstruction years following WW2. It was heavily inspired by the Zeiss designs since Nikon was new to this game and needed somewhere to start from. I would consider this lens to belong to the 1st generation wherein the lenses have very strong resemblances to the Zeiss “inspirations”. By the 2nd generation, Nikon had learned enough and their lenses begin to look different in terms of design and engineering. Everybody has to start somewhere, right?

This is a compact but dense lens. The Nikkor-P.C 8.5cm f/2 is a joy to hold in your hands. It was made of chrome-over-brass with big pieces of glass, hence the weight. This amazing lens is legendary and you can even say that it was partly responsible for introducing the Japanese camera and optics industry to the world. Nikon is known here (in Japan) as one of the companies that helped revive the Japanese post-war export industry and this lens helped it achieve that. If you want to know the remarkable story of this lens then please read this web comics made by Nikon. This lens is so significant to Nikon’s history that the lens has its own comics! More

Hello, everybody! I was at the hospital last week to have a heart monitor installed. I was a bit tired and stressed the last few weeks so my health was a bit down. Now, the doctor advised me to have the heart monitor attached for a day to see what’s going on and while I think that this is a little too much since my problem is only some weird palpitations and not some dangerous heart condition, I just went along just for the sake of it. I can repair broken equipment but I cannot fix sick people. If only we can just have our organs fixed or replaced just as easily as opening up a machine and changing what’s wrong then the world would be a very different place to live in. I do not wish to be a bionic but I’m very thankful of the advances in medical technology. Today, I am going to show you a how to replace a problematic part found in a very popular Nikon gadget so please read on!

Introduction:

The Nikon MD-3 is a very popular motor drive amongst Nikon F2 users. It was affordable and is the “basic trim” as far as Nikon F2 motor drives are concerned. It is convenient to have this with your Nikon F2 when you have a heavy lens and it is very useful for sports photography in particular because you have automatic advance as a feature. In this blog post, I am going to show you how to repair a very common problem with the Nikon MD-3 and show you why this thing happens. There aren’t many resource available on this topic so I hope that you will enjoy this article and if you like it, please share this on your page!

Here is the Nikon MD-3 inside the shop’s display case. It sure has seen better years. These are usually found in this condition because they were usually used pretty hard by pros.

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