Escapism

Having written about my Nikon FM3a (see the previous post), here’s a frame taken with it. It’s a snap of a busking escapologist mid-performance at the 2010 ‘Big Cheese’ festival in the grounds of Caerphilly Castle. The FM3a in this case was loaded with Fomapan 100 black & white film, which I later home-developed in Rodinal R09. It was taken the same day as this shot.

The one aspect of the FM3a I’m less fond of is the abrupt clunk of its shutter mechanism. Some cameras have smoothly quiet shutters but with this one you distinctly feel it every time you take a picture. The effect is less pronounced, it seems to me, when a bulkier or heavier lens is mounted on the camera, which seems to absorb the shock of that mechanism a little better.