Jonathan Grado

I was lucky enough to find a Nikon 35Ti, a point-and-shoot 35mm film camera, while I was dropping off some film at a local shop. I don’t think I’ve used a point-and-shoot film camera since I was young enough to get away with pretending I was asleep in the car so I could be carried back to the house (I had found the first photo I ever took, which was certainly taken with one).

Shooting with the Nikon 35Ti

Back to the 35Ti. This camera was released in 1993 and is an elegant brick. It’s somewhat slow to focus, has tiny made-for-thumbnail buttons, and I really enjoyed shooting it. My family visited from Brooklyn for my birthday so I decided to run through a few rolls while they were here. Then immediately continue that momentum with a quick day trip west to Driftwood, Wimberley and San Marcos with Daniel. The last few times I shot film in Austin it was just cul-de-sacs in autumn or downtown on a rainy day, so this was a nice change of pace. Got to try the Nikon 35Ti with Portra 400, Gold 200 (more, please), and Tri-X 400 on the pink car at Devil’s Backbone, an abandoned house, Pioneer Town, and another abandoned school bus.

Pushing Tri-X 400 to 1600

I got to push film for the first time as well, pushing the Tri-X 400 +2 to 1600.  I used the Nikon 35Ti as if the film inside was a more sensitive 1600 ISO roll, leading to the camera thinking it needs less light to capture an image. In the moment, this creates underexposed images. The next step is to write "+2" on your film roll when you go to develop it, so the lab knows to develop as if the roll is 1600.

I loved seeing the black and white film pushed two stops. Did I get a taste of being pushy? Do I want to push all my black and white film now? Is this me subconsciously telling myself to be more assertive? The fun part is it could be all of that.

Quick note: the auto flash was pretty sensitive to thinking it was too dark and always trying to make a scene. To cancel this, you need to hold the flash-cancel button every time while pressing the shutter. That button is tiny. I ended up turning off auto flash using the input code from Nikon’s manual. 

How do you turn off the Nikon 35Ti auto flash?

To disable the Nikon 35Ti flash, first make sure the camera is off. While holding SET, turn the dial up top to P. You should see ‘00 0 00’ or ‘00 0 01’. Press MODE to cycle the three sections and SET to change the digits. For always flash-cancel you’ll want to set the code ‘01 1 01’. To save the function, half-press the shutter.