My Ugly Nikon F

Have you ever rescued an abused and abandoned puppy? This is how I felt when I saw this rough and dirty Nikon F. It was covered all over with sticky and dried gaffer tape residues. It looks like it was left to rut inside an old barn. The back and bottom plate was salvaged from another black Nikon F. When it arrived I was afraid to touch it without gloves. Why was this fine piece of equipment treated this way? If it could talk it must have a very interesting story to tell.
After some cleaning and removing of the dried tape residues with a little paint stripping gel, I paired it with my old Nikkor-S 50mm f1.4 lens and did some test shots. I was happy with the results, it is working beautifully. There are no light leaks and all the shutter speeds except for the 1/2 to 1 second seem very accurate. I'm keeping it for my functioning collection. Aside from being another excellent shooting tool, it would also be a good conversation piece

Holga Lens on my Olympus E-PL1

One thing I like about micro 4/3 digital cameras such as my old Olympus E-PL1 is it's ability to accept many different manual focus lenses designed for other 35mm cameras. Recently, after reading about it in another blog, I bought a Holga 25mm lens designed specifically for micro 4/3 cameras.
I have a couple of Holga 120N film cameras and I like the soft, vignetted images they produce but lately I haven't had a chance to develop my own black and white film so I thought I'll give this Holga lens a try. It is a cheap plastic lens available from eBay and has only one f-stop, f8. Focusing is done by manually using the distance symbols on the lens barrel as guide but with the micro 4/3 camera you have more precise exposure and focusing control than the Holga film camera. The EVF on my Olympus also helps in framing and focusing more precisely. The lens did produced a Holga effect but the film camera still has some subtle nuances that I like better, maybe I'm missing the light leaks.

2013 Philippine Independence Day, NYC