Continuing Adventures with the 55mm f/2.8 Micro-Nikkor

I’ve probably had more photographic fun with my 55mm f/2.8 Micro-Nikkor than any other lens I have used. I owned two of these at one time and gave one away to a friend to share the joy. If you shoot Nikon and like using the 50mm focal length, the Micro-Nikkor should be in your camera bag. It’s very sharp at every aperture, reasonably fast and focuses down to 9”. It’s a macro lens that you can use as an everyday walk around lens.

I’ve written about this lens many times here. It’s my rainy day lens, allowing me to have fun making pictures of every day items around the house when the weather doesn’t permit a photo walk. I’ve also used it to get out of creative slumps and to quickly test new camera bodies, which is what I did with this roll of Eastman 5222 film and a Nikon FM body I had just purchased.

This is a shot of my faithful Kodak Darkroom Timer.

I’ve decided I want to get over my fear of loading stainless steel developing reels so I picked up a couple of Honeywell-Nikor tanks and reels. This one came in its original box.

Here is one of the reels with some sacrificial test film.

This Canon FD lens is in the queue to shoot on my F1n. In the meantime, it was a good subject.

My Weston Master II light meter is almost 80 years old and other than in some tricky situations, faithfully gives me accurate readings.

Jim Grey has been doing a nice series on his blog about the little instruction sheets that Kodak used to include with every roll of film. It’s amazing how many different kinds of film Kodak made and how they were confident enough in their quality and market dominance to put their film types right on their cameras.

Film rewind knob on Kodak Retina IIIs camera

I couldn’t decide if I wanted the tone arm or the record label to be in focus when I made this image. As you can see, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours album was my soundtrack while I fooled around with my Micro-Nikkor.

As I mentioned up top, part of the reason to shoot this roll of film was to test a Nikon FM body that I picked up cheap at a local camera shop. Most of the frames came out just fine but a few showed signs of a light leak like the one below—I was chopping peppers for chicken fajitas and thought this might make an interesting shot. Most vintage SLRs will at least need new seals and mirror bumpers before you can fully depend on them. This FM will get a service soon.

One thing about having a macro lens is that you can find inspiration almost everywhere, like I did in my garage and inside my tool chest.

Or in the garden…

And speaking of Kodak film…

I keep a 52mm Nikon chrome ring UV filter on my Micro-Nikkor, not because I need it, but because I like the way it looks. The front element on this lens is very recessed eliminating the need for a protective filter or a lens hood.

Self-portrait, Nikon FM, 55/2.8 Micro-Nikkor on Eastman 5222 Double-X film

If you shoot Nikon, you can certainly buy a cheaper standard prime lens but it’s hard to beat the 55/2.8 Micro-Nikkor for versatility and performance.