I thought I’d take the time to update my blog with a few thoughts on one of my favourite point and shoot film cameras, the Nikon 35Ti. I’d been interested in this camera ever since I first handled one when I bought my Olympus mju II in 2003. I picked up my first one in 2017 when a photographer friend in Shanghai decided to sell one of his. At this stage I had been unable to track down my old mju II and I was after a film camera I could slip into my pocket and take on holiday. I mainly use it for portraits of my fiancee Vanessa either when we’re out in Shanghai or when we travel together for work. Looking over the photos I’ve taken with this little camera really makes me appreciate the amazing times it’s accompanied us on. Right now under coronavirus lockdown in Shanghai, these times seem like a thousand years ago, but I’ve been a professional photographer for long enough to know that this kind of life has its peaks and troughs. Regardless, it’s been nice to re-live these times (peaks) by looking through the shots I’ve taken with the Nikon 35Ti.
So if you’re reading this, you’re probably wondering, “Is the Nikon 35Ti a good camera”. Well, yes it is. The first thing professional photographers mention after getting some rolls back is generally how incredibly sharp that little Nikkor 35mm f2.8 lens is. The images this camera produces are about as sharp as what you get with an SLR. with a good lens. It also has TTL flash. At first I was annoyed at how flash-happy the camera is, but now the perfectly balanced flash is one of my favourite things about the camera.
The 35Ti was launched in 1993 as a premium point and shoot to compete with the likes of the Contax T2. According to the Shanghai photographer I bought my first from, the 35Ti cost US$1,000 on its release, which made it the second most expensive camera in their lineup at the time.
35 stands for the focal length, a 35mm Nikkor lens some consider the sharpest ever put in a compact camera. Ti stands for the titanium body, which is bronze on the 35Ti and black on the 28mm version the 28Ti, released in 1994. Then, as is now, the quality of the lenses, a very sophisticated 3D Matrix metering system and balanced TTL flash were some of the big selling points upon its release. It was also the first Nikon camera with command wheel that you control with your thumb, which was later featured on the Nikon F5.
Despite all this, the greatest appeal this camera had and still has is how it looks. It’s beautiful. I’ve described this camera before as like a Japanese camera designed by French people. Although it is lovely to look at it is ridiculously over engineered with flair trumping function on many of its design aspects. I say this from the position of someone who has owned three French cars.
The most unique aspect of this camera are its analogue dials that indicate, focus distance, frame number, aperture and exposure compensation. Nikon called this the Nikon Analog Display System. There’s no shutter speed information, but there’s a LED reading of that inside the viewfinder. These are good things and easily enough to navigate. One caveat is that the dials can go haywire and you need to reset them - more on that later. Another common gripe about the 35Ti are its tiny buttons to turn on or cancel the flash. It beggars belief that a camera with this much R&D could be released with such a poorly thought out system. In order to deliberately engage or cancel the flash, I need to hold the camera up I front of my face and then position the corner of the finger on the few millimetres of plastic, and then put the camera to my face and look for the flash symbol in the LED display to see whether I’ve cancelled it or not. I’ll more likely want to cancel than engage the flash because it’s a pretty flash happy camera. This annoyed me when I first got one, but now it’s something I’ve come to love about the camera. The TTL flash in it is better than any other point and shoot I’ve used. It’s just annoying that it takes a bit of effort to cancel the flash compared to any other point and shoot camera I’ve used. Nikon replaced these silly little buttons with sliding ones on the 28Ti.
I think part of the problem is that when I have a 35Ti or any point and shoot in my hands I want to dictate how it shoots as much as I can. One way the 35Ti differs to a camera like the Olympus mju II is that it offers a lot more manual controls. When I shoot with a mju, I have a few flash modes to choose from, including flash off as well as a spot meter, but that’s it. With the 35Ti, you can control the shutter speed to some extent and have a lot more control over exposure. The character of the lenses on the two cameras is also very different. The 35Ti is noticeably sharper with strong contrast compared to the mju. This Nikon camera basically has three shooting modes P for program, A for Aperture priority and T for long exposure, sort of like bulb on an SLR. In this mode, you press the shutter once to open it and once again to close it. It would be nifty for night photography, but you’d want a sturdy tripod for that little camera. I’ve never used T mode. I’ll mostly shoot in A mode, which limits the maximum shutter speed to 1/250. The maximum shutter in P is 1/500. I have no idea why.
One final gripe is that, as I know, both of these Ti cameras also have a ridiculously fiddly battery door that you need to screw open and closed with a coin. It’s a bit tricky to put it back in place without it popping out and landing on the floor.
These days a 35Ti sells for around US$600 and up. The Contax T3, released in 2001 seems to be the gold standard in premium film point and shoots, but the prices are just crazy - a few thousand dollars for out of production film camera that hardly anyone can repair. Apparently the Nikkor lens on the 35ti is at least on par with the 35mm f2.8 Sonnar lens on theContax T3. If you’re lucky you can get a T2 for around US$800. I think a 28Ti are also around that price, probably due to their relative scarcity. I haven’t used the 28Ti or either of these Contax cameras though. The T2 gained popularity partly on it being used by fashion photographers like Mario Testino, Juergen Teller and Terry Richardson. Celebrities like Kendall Jenner and Drake made the T3 into a party fashion accessory for the well-heeled. Apart from this, I wonder whether the Contax cameras command a higher price than the Nikon 35ti because they are more reliable. It would be hard to believe they could be more fiddly to use.
To give an example, ten minutes after walked out the door after I’d handed over the cash for my first 35Ti over at a friend’s studio in Shanghai, the dials on the thing started to move around in circles as if it were possessed. Apparently it had never done this before. I didn’t have any hard feelings about this - anyone who buys a maybe 27 year old analogue camera does so at their own risk.
Later that evening I was able to do some googling on this issue, find the manual online and re-set the dials, which is also a fairly convoluted process punching in a code into the digital display on the top with two tiny plastic buttons on the back of the camera. I’ve had to do this four or five times since. Actually there are many ways to customise the camera through entering various codes via the two tiny plastic buttons. E.g. you can turn off the flash, switch from 3D Matrix to centre weighted metering or from auto focus to manual focus, select the aperture to display in the viewfinder instead of shutter speed and so on. All these tasks require the multiple pressing of tiny buttons to set a bunch of numbers, which are basically the code for the various functions. It’s a very convoluted system.
Once I got over these early hiccups, I enjoyed shooting with the 35Ti. The main things I liked being the spot-on metering, super sharp lens, shutter speed info in the viewfinder and balanced fill flash. Shortly after I’d bought it, I was really impressed when I got some rolls of Provia 100F back from a trip to Lijiang and Shangri-La.
Unfortunately, about a year later, the meter suddenly gave readings of two stops out, so I took it in for repair at the main ‘shifu’ (master) I use at the Xingguang camera market in Shanghai. This guy is one of few who can repair point and shoot cameras. The one drawback is that he is very much in demand and can take a long time to return repaired cameras. For instance, I had him turn 2 broken mju II cameras and broken mju I into one functioning camera as a Christmas gift for a friend. It took about 9 months and a lot of cajoling.
The shifu ended up putting a new meter into the 35Ti (it’s not actually a part made by Nikon, he said) and I got it back about half a year later. Once it was back, I found that the meter was 2/3 of a stop over, but that’s not much of an issue since I can just wind the exposure compensation dial back 2 clicks. The bonus is that if I wanted to, I could now push black and white film to 2500 ASA via the 2 stop exposure override dial. The repair also stopped the flash from working unless I employ the tiny ‘Flash On’ button on the front.
Although I’ve complained quite a lot about the 35Ti here, I did buy a second one while I was in Melbourne in 2018 while my other one was still getting repaired. Actually it was a straight swap for a Hasselblad Xpan 45m lens for a 35Ti that was essentially new in the box with a nifty little leather case. This one more or less operates like it should, so basically I’ll take one if I’m going out at night and want to shoot with flash, or take the other one if I don’t want to use flash. The first roll I shot with this one was a roll of slide and I found it tends to overexpose slightly, but that’s not a bad thing since I’m only shooting colour negative in it.
Neither of these cameras are getting much use lately, so in the coming months I might even sell one of them. Although I have pointed out a few of these cameras’ shortcomings, they are able to make very nice photographs. I’ve grown fond of these cameras despite and possibly because of their many quirks. Here’s a little gallery of shots I’ve made with the Nikon 35Ti on various emulsions. From memory, these were shot on Fujifilm Superia 400 Premium, Provia 100F, Ilford HP5 400 Plus pushed two stops, and Kodak Vision 3 50D.
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