Nikon cameras currently bring me a sense of joy that many other camera systems, except for LUMIX and Fujifilm, are capable of doing. And part of that comes from how the cameras work along with the customization of how your images look in-camera. Ideally, I want to shoot a photo and not need to do any sort of editing afterward. Nikon’s imaging recipes rival Fujifilm’s for sure. But what’s more is the fact that even those made by third parties are great too.
For example, take Scott Tucker’s Vintage film preset. With this loaded onto my Nikon Zf and the 7Artisans 50mm f1.1 attached to the camera, it was impossible to not fall in love with everything the camera produced. All of the images legitimately looked like a distant memory that contained the flavors of a time long gone. And therapy has taught me to not think that I’m going back in time — I’m instead continuing where I left off. If I were going back in time, my eyes would work differently, my body fat percentage would be lower, one of my knees wouldn’t hurt, and I’d have more hair. But instead, Scott’s Vintage film preset reminds me that life can be all about how we look at things and not how we have to edit our own stories to fit a story we want to tell. The former seems so much more truthful, organic, and not part of a revisionist thought process.
Mind you, that’s different from the creation of art for the sake of expressionism.
So why feature this one specific preset for this one specific camera brand? Because it’s worth talking about. You’ll probably get the most from it when you use vintage or old-school Leica lenses with a Techart adapter. The reason is that it’s got a classic look to it. There’s onion bokeh, swirl, weird lighting shapes, softness balanced with sharpness, and all of it is accentuated with colors that you’d otherwise only see in the old albums that your family might break out at times.
If you shoot Nikon, and you’re bored of the standard looks available, consider this.
Here are a bunch of sample images shot before the holidays.
