 You probably shouldn't be drinking one of those every day. Your doctor literally told you your blood work is terrifying Monica The Avengers traveled through a wormhole back in time to stop Thanos The least that I can do to bring back air chrome is chug one of these Mountain Dew flaming hots every day until Kodak brings it back Today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace Well to no one's surprise Probably because I have a diagnosable addiction to eBay at this point I've purchased a few interesting items of film photography gear in today's the day that I tell you about them Let's start with the camera that has a shutter slap that sounds like someone karate chopping a wet and juicy ham the hassy Originally my 501c had the waist level finder that is so par for the course in Hasselblad culture But as I shot with it more and more I kind of found that the flipped image was a bit too much for my unevolved Neanderthal brain to understand I was a bit conflicted I love that camera and the Zeiss lens that I have for it oozes 3d pop But I wasn't really a fan of the shooting experience as a whole it started to have a strange effect on me crazy Hasselblad fever dreams Where I'd wake up in cold sweat and warm brown sludge that came from Somewhere I tried everything to make it go away drugs alcohol yoga violence etc But eventually I figured it out and I realized that I just need a new finder So I started looking into prisms more specifically prisms with a light meter and I came across the far too expensive Hasselblad PME 45 and because I'm irresponsible with money I pulled the trigger and bought one and I can honestly say it is made shooting the hassy a much more enjoyable Experience for me and everyone that puts up with me. It's fair to say that the camera loses a bit of its overall aesthetic and compactness when the finder is attached, but I don't really care the metering system on this is Actually kind of the best part the all-knowing and all-seeing meter gives you an EV number and you simply just line up your shutter speed and aperture rings To that EV number here on the side You can even lock it in place and open up or close down your aperture if you want to but it's Optional because Hasselblad knew that you might be afraid of commitment I was so excited by this new metering system that I took it on a road trip and really put it to the test But more on that later nextly if that's even a word I kind of went on a bit of a rampage and upgraded a bunch of stuff on my Nikon F2 This camera is a relatively new addition to my ridiculously unnecessary film camera collection that Monica is constantly begging me to downsize But I wouldn't be the man that she fell in love with if I didn't have a serious camera hoarding problem while we're on the topic of Viewfinders one of my plans for this camera was to upgrade the viewfinder to a newer viewfinder that would accept newer more modern lenses I originally had the Nikon DP2 prism finder But I purchased the Nikon DP12 because it has a more expanded range of light sensitivity And it works with lenses that do not feature Nikon's famous rabbit ears. So let's go ahead and do the install here real quick It's probably the hardest install I've ever done But don't worry if you're like me and somehow managed to light a lot of stuff on fire whenever you try to fix things I'll walk you through it Great now that that's on we can talk about some of the lenses that I purchased to work with this viewfinder The game plan for the Nikon F2 is to have a focal length system that can cover anything from 16 millimeter all the way to 200 millimeter and I'm gonna do it with three zoom lenses first up I threw down some dogecoin on the Nikon 16 to 35 millimeter 2.8 ED lens and the ED doesn't stand for what you think it does my dudes these ED lenses are well built and hard as a rock 24-7 they have no problem rising to the occasion whatsoever They're somewhat newer than the era of lenses that were designed to work with the Nikon F2 So they probably have newer coatings and better designs the best part those that they have manual aperture rings Which is good because Nikon soon transitioned this era of lenses to electronic controlled apertures that the Nikon F2 doesn't really see Iris to Iris with I plan to use this ultra wide 16 millimeter lens for shots of star trails as it can go down to f2.8 Which is also coincidentally how many push-ups I can do next up is a lens that might confuse you a little so I recently Picked up this lens. It's a Leica R 35 to 70 millimeter lens And you might be like wow Jason what the fuck you don't even own a Leica R camera You fake-ass poser and to that I'd say you're right about not owning a Leica R camera and everything else Picked it up because you can actually adapt these old Leica R lenses to the Nikon F system with a little bit of lens Surgery and that's what I had planned to do I plan to Frankenstein this onto my Nikon F2 Leica R glass is quite respected in the photography and Cinematography worlds as being sharp and just flat out effective this particular 35 millimeter 70 was actually designed by the Leica team Themselves whereas a lot of other Leica R lenses were designed in partnership with Minolta if I understand that correctly And I'm not just spouting incorrect information out into the void for adapting most Leica R prime lenses to f mount It's a relatively easy mount swap and you're golden But of course I had to pick probably the hardest conversion Leica R zoom lenses are notoriously difficult to adapt and require a bit of Extra elbow grease which is a good thing. I had plenty because I don't shower eventually I did get my 35 to 70 adapted with focus to infinity I also de-click the lens so I can get in between apertures and further please the TTL light meter on the camera the install itself was a Huge pain in the ass and a very arduous process, but whatever I feel like doing anything nowadays is like that to cover the rest of the focal length range I plan on getting the Nikon 80 to 200 millimeter 2.8, but have yet to do so I don't really shoot a lot at that focal length So I'm not really in a big hurry at the moment last but not yeast infection or whatever the phrase is I have this Nikkor 35 millimeter PC shift lens I somewhat already covered this lens of my is the X-Pan worth it video It basically just seems like it's a far cheaper alternative to the famous X-Pan 30 millimeter lens which costs more than my car at this point the biggest downside of course is that it's scale focus only But hey look on the bright side f 2.8 ain't bad. I haven't actually tested it out or shot anything with it yet So let's go hit the wide open range and wrangle in some photons It's 2022 I think it's about time we end chain control once and for all, you know every once in a while I go through a major upheaval of my entire scanning process I always just feel like I could improve upon it and I wish I had that same drive for my personal life Anyway after some research I ditched the Nikkor macro lens that I was using and built an entirely new system around an enlarger lens more specifically the Apo rotagon 75 millimeter D Why might someone want to use an enlarger lens instead of a macro lens? Some of the reasons that seem to be the most clear are that enlarger lens manufacturers put a ton of effort into Creating clean free of distortion and aberration lens designs for print copying or enlarging They basically just wanted to make lens that were free of any character whatsoever before I pull down my pants and drop a huge Steamer on my old lens I do want to say the Nikkor macro that I was using wasn't bad by any stretch the more that I began stitching X-Pan scans however, I did start to notice that there was some aberration and vignetting in the corners It was certainly subtle, but it did cause enough of a problem in stitching that hopefully this new system can eliminate Getting the enlarger lens set up was no walk along the rim of an active volcano that could blow at any minute You know what I mean after all these enlarger lenses don't have focus mechanisms built in long story short I used an M39 to Nikon F adapter to attach the lens to the Nikon PB4 bellows which then attached via an adapter to my Sony a7 R2 I even found a cute little lens hood to throw on it regardless of all the adapting I had to do To get this set up working. I am very very happy with the scans that I get out of camera They're very sharp It seems to hold up quite well on a digital sensor with no aberration to speak of Finally, I'd like to announce that my film stash was growing so big It was becoming a problem and I needed to purchase a second freezer to put next to my already massive Film freezer because it was literally out of room for film I guess that's not a bad problem to have but yeah It was definitely a problem something that I have in my film freezer though is quite magical Something almost unheard of no not irrefutable proof of Bigfoot, but actually ectochrome infrared Otherwise known as the only thing keeping me going otherwise known as air chrome The story of how this came to be is that Caleb and I were out in Joshua Tree talking to the one and only Matt Marash And somehow in conversation we brought up that there was some four by five air chrome listed on eBay for $3,000 which is pretty crazy and it was coming from Australia So all your photos will be upside down and backward anyway But then Matt mentioned that he had seen a seller on the film photography dark web who was selling a box of air chrome for far Far cheaper. So right there and then we made a blood oath to go in on it and split up the 30 sheets amongst the three of us I haven't shot anything with him yet because I don't want to use a four by five reducing back on my 8 by 10 So I guess I got a hop in the market for a four by five camera or at least beat up some nerd and steal one Anyway, that's it for today. 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Oh I also got a new Pentex six seven viewfinder magnifier because last year in Joshua Tree This Pentex six seven fell off the tripod and hit the ground pretty hard Which probably confused seismologists in the area anyway It landed as first on the magnifier loop and I don't know after that It was just never really the same magnifier loop that I had grown to love the metal was actually bent and couldn't connect with the Actual viewfinder anymore. I tried bending it back myself, but got nowhere. So I just ordered a replacement They're about a hundred bucks on eBay or one gallon of gas out here in California