Here I am, looking for a new drift in trying to catch the wind towards re-kindling the interest of doing still photography in fully manual exposure modes, as we did in the early days of film photography, doing it this time, though, with a digital SLR camera that only permits manual shooting mode when mounted with an old-school focus lens. The Nikon D80, an enthusiast-grade DSLR, launched together with the semi-professional Nikon D200 in 2006, is the model I am referring to, and the lens, an equally vintage Nikon Series E 35mm 1:2.5.
The D80 comes with a 6MP CCD sensor, and has the screw-mount autofocus drive, but lacks the 'Non-CPU Lens Data' menu item or entering information about non-CPU lenses, and the aperture-indexing finger for full-aperture metering with older 'AI' lenses. When used with these old-school manual focus lenses, the D80 will only work in Manual mode, with the option of setting the ISO, shutter speed, and lens aperture opening, manually.
To get things going, these are the first batch of shots I did earlier in the morning, and as recommended, the shots were taken in color (1/100 second, ISO 100) and converted to monochrome on the tabletop image editor. On the conversion route, the images were tweaked with the green filter overlay and a 50% increase in contrast. 'Chimping' was also used during the shoot, as I did so to bracket the shots.
The Nikon Series E lenses are also acknowledged for other excellent performance and should not be just left aside when they can still be put to good use. To get you started on the same quest as well, the Sunny 16 Rule is the way to go.
