people places n things
After I finished ironing the last of my spring and summer wardrobe last week I had to search everywhere for that box of extra hangers I was certain I stashed somewhere in the house last fall, but to no avail. So I went down into that giant dumping ground I call my basement to look for them there. I didn't find the box of hangers, but I did find an old box of camera equipment. Stopping to look through it for a few moments with nostalgic eyes, I spotted the box that once held my old manual focus 20mm nikkor. As I brushed the box off to one side it felt oddly heavy. I thought I took all my old lenses out of the basement a few years ago when I read somewhere they would develop fungus from being stored in an environment like that - and they did! But with so much old stuff in numerous boxes, I couldn't find everything and my 20mm lens was one of them, till now.
Dreading what the lens must look after all this time, I hurriedly opened the box so I could rush it out of the cold dark prison it spent the last 11 years of its life in. Surprisingly the old original bag of desiccate jell, and the UV filter I left on it, took the heaviest brunt of the fungus assault. The lens itself was barely affected. None the less I plan to send it out to Focal Point Inc in Colorado to be professionally cleaned as soon as I can scrape up the money to pay for it, which is what I've had to do with a half a dozen other old nikkor optics over the last 2 years. Cleaning it up as best I could, it looked so good when I finished that I decided to drop it in my camera bag today and see what kind of image quality it was capable of delivering in the mean time as I headed out to Prospect Park in Brooklyn to scout out a location for a future shot I had in mind.
Late in the day as I came upon a spot on my map called "Drummers Grove" (and once you arrive there no explanation is necessary as to how it got the moniker), I knew if I ever was going to have a chance to put my old nikkor to use today this was going to be the opportunity to so. Looking at the images it captured on my ride back home on the ferry, I could see this old lens still has a lot of good images left in it.
springcandidProspect ParkmusiciansNYCBrooklynblack and white
- No Comments