{"id":25559,"date":"2024-03-17T00:01:29","date_gmt":"2024-03-17T07:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=25559"},"modified":"2024-03-16T17:57:24","modified_gmt":"2024-03-17T00:57:24","slug":"nikons-n70-35mm-film-camera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2024\/03\/17\/nikons-n70-35mm-film-camera\/","title":{"rendered":"Nikon’s N70 35mm Film Camera"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Joe Berk<\/h6>\n

I visited with my sister a couple of weeks ago and she gave me four 35mm film cameras.\u00a0 You know, the ones we used to use before everything went digital.\u00a0 One was a point and shoot Minolta, another was a Chinese copy of a Minolta single lens reflex non-autofocus camera, another was my Dad’s old Honeywell Pentax ES (with four Takumar lenses that were known as some of the best glass available back in the 1960s and 1970s), and a fourth was my old Nikon N70, complete with a Tamron 28-105mm zoom lens.\u00a0 I had given the N70 to my sister when I bought a Nikon F5, which was a huge top-of-the-line film camera when film ruled the roost.\u00a0 \u00a0The N70 made the full circle, coming back to me again after being gone for more than 20 years.\u00a0 The N70 is the focus (pardon the pun) of this blog.<\/p>\n

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The N70 and it’s Tamron 28-105 zoom lens. I can use some of my other Nikon digital camera lenses on the N70, too.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The N70 was the second camera I ever purchased.\u00a0 The first was a 35mm Minolta X700 that I bought a week before my first daughter was born because my wife told me I needed a camera to record the occasion.\u00a0 I bought the Minolta because it was what the store (a large Fedco, which is no more) sold and everything was automatic (except for focusing, which no one offered at the time).\u00a0 And, it was what my brother-in-law shot (he was a photography enthusiast, so I figured it had to be good).\u00a0 The Minolta was a far better camera than I was a photographer, but I really wasn’t getting the eye-popping photos I saw in the photography magazines (and I did a lot of my learning through magazines; there was no internet in those days).<\/p>\n

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The N70 had what Nikon called a command dial. It wasn’t well received in the market back then. I’ll have to relearn how to use it. It was one of the first film cameras to have an LCD screen interface, a common feature on today’s digital cameras.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nope, in those days, my Minolta was a manual focus camera, and I figured what I really needed was autofocus.\u00a0 The ticket in for me was the Nikon N70 (the very one you see here) sold to me by a very competent young salesman at our local Ritz camera store.\u00a0 It used to be that every major shopping mall had a Ritz camera store; with the advent of the internet, they’ve all disappeared, too.<\/p>\n

I didn’t know very much about photography back then, but autofocus really made things better.\u00a0 My pictures (all print, of course) were turning out great.\u00a0 I liked the reaction my little 4×6 prints were getting at family dinners, and I started reading more and more about the art of photography.\u00a0 You know, all the stuff the camera did automatically.\u00a0 Apertures.\u00a0 Shutter speeds.\u00a0 Different ISOs.\u00a0 How to use the flash, even in daylight.\u00a0 And then I learned more.\u00a0 Composition.\u00a0 The rule of thirds.\u00a0 Lighting.\u00a0 The more I learned, the more I shot, and the more I shot, the better my photos became.\u00a0 Then a funny thing happened. I went back to my old Minolta (without autofocus) and my photos with it were way better, too.\u00a0 Who would have thought?<\/p>\n

The world continued to change.\u00a0 Ebay became a thing, and so did digital photography.\u00a0 I resisted digital photography, partly because I am a cheap SOB and partly because I thought I was a purist.\u00a0 Until I tried digital.\u00a0 The difference was incredible.\u00a0 I sold all of my film cameras and the lenses that went with them.<\/p>\n

With my sister’s generosity and my newly-rehomed collection of four film cameras, though, I am regressing and I hope to soon be rediscovering the wonders of film photography.\u00a0 Or going back to my roots.\u00a0 Or becoming more traditional.\u00a0 You can choose the words you like.<\/p>\n

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Nikon didn’t do an adequate job selecting the rear camera door rubberized covering. As it aged, it turned to a sticky, gooey mess.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Where the film goes. The N70 didn’t require threading the film in. Simply plop the film in the camera with about three inches pulled out of the canister, close the camera back, press the shutter button, and the film feeds in automatically. It advances automatically after each shot (a cool feature 30+ years ago).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Anyway, the topic du jour is my N70.\u00a0 I just ordered a few rolls of Fuji ISO 200 film<\/a> for it from Amazon, and I’ll put the old Nikon through its paces when the film gets here.\u00a0 When I picked up the N70 from my sister, I thought she had spilled something gooey on the back cover because it was all sticky.\u00a0 But it wasn’t her doing.\u00a0 I did a Google search and it was a common complaint.\u00a0 Apparently Nikon had applied a rubber-like material on the cover, which degraded over time.\u00a0 I had that happen on a Bell motorcycle helmet one time (a shame, really; I loved the artwork on that helmet).\u00a0 One of the guys who wrote about the Nikon N70’s gooification issue said that the rubber goo came off with alcohol, so I’ll try that on mine.<\/p>\n

The Nikon feels good in my hands (the gooey cover notwithstanding).\u00a0 I packed it on a lot of motorcycle rides, including the Three Flags Classic<\/a> nearly 20 years ago.\u00a0 Handling it is like coming home to an old friend. Watch for my photos with the N70; I’ll post them in a future blog (if I can find a place that still develops 35mm film).<\/p>\n

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