Thank you so much (and for the help with the binoculars). I went to the Nikon website and couldn't get anywhere...I'll try again. I went to a bunch of used books stores looking for old photography how to books or manuals with no luck. You have given me inspiration to just experiment and figure it out. Many thanks.

The person who gave me the camera bought the most expensive/quality equipment at the time and it has been stored carefully for 35-40 years. He said the lense (I guess its a macro) would be excellent for the teeny-tiny flowers I wanted to photograph. Between 67-74 he went from an "Ansel Adams" wannabe - to full a color Nature photographer, then to a new facination with tiny detail closeups of color and form. There was a new interest in creating art from microscopic close up detail in the early 70's... it was incredibly beautiful stuff!

Thank you for taking so much time to answer my post, I hope your answer benefits many.

Use Google to find more information.

Go to Google's "advanced search" page.
In the first line, enter "Nikon"

In the second line, must contain exactly, enter the model descriptor of the camera such as DK40, etc.

This should narrow the number of hits to a manageable number of relavent hits. If not, scan down to the bottom of the first page of results and click on "search on results". A new panel will pop up. Supply an additional search term, and then hit return or click on the continue button.

Good advice from jemdandy. We are making the assumption that your camera has a light meter. The one I owned was a Nikon F and did not have the FTN finder. Instead I used a hand held meter that I could use with other cameras that I had which did not have built in meters either. If you haven't gotten your's to work a hand held meter is second best. As for a good lab for printing you can check out KenRockwell.com for his lab contact info. Ken also addresses film vs. digital. According to his site, I haven't used the lab yet myself, they will also scan your film and create files to a CD as a back up and for ease of posting or e-mailing. You might get on E-bay to look for a manual for the model camera you have or take it to a local camera store that has been in business for a long time. There may be someone there that knows film cameras. Not in the mall, all they can talk about is digital. Another thing to keep in mind when doing close up photography is that the greater the magnification of your subject you also magnify any camera movement. Also your range of depth of field is less so you will need to us F stops like F-11, F-16, F-22; This will require you to use slower shutter speeds as F-16 lets in half the amount of light as F-11 so you must leave the shutter open longer by using a slower shutter speed. Like using 1/60 second instead of 1/125 or 1/250 especially if you use slow speed films like ISO 50 or 100. So as you may see you need to stop your lens down to gain depth of field but you slow the shutter speed down one stop for every F-stop to keep your exposure correct until you get to some point you can't hold the camera still enough as the shutter speed is slower so you would need a tripod and cable release. You might not notice the difference in a small print as much but the first time you print a 8x10 of a pretty flower or bug and you see it isn't as sharp as you thought it was it will most likely be lack of depth of field or lack of sharpness because of camera movement. This is why I got interested in photography 40 years ago. I wanted to learn how to make close up photo's. Hope I wasn't to confussing.
John

Here is the web address for a sight that has user manuals for cameras. lenses and many other photo items in PDF format for free downloads.

I have used this site many, many, many times and find that the manuals are reproductions of the original manuals.

http://www.butkus.org/chinon/index.html

When you get to the site home page you will see a list of most of the common camera manufacturers. Select your brand and it will direct you to a page where you can find the specific model number you have. You can either review the manual on the site or you can download a copy free.

Difference between a Macro lens and a closup lense.

Both lenses can do close-ups. The difference lies within the optic design. A macro lense has been optimized for recroding flat objects such as postage stamps and post cards. It brings the image of a flat object in focus all across the film (or sensor) field.

The other lense is an ordinary lens that can close focus. Objects equidistant from a point within the lens comes into focus on the film/sensor plane. In other words, the region of sharp focus is a spherical shell instead of being flat.

Back in the 60's I began learning serious photography by working with a Century Graphic 4x5 press camera and an Argus C-3 35mm range finder camera. Neither of which had a light meter and I did not have a handheld light meter so I had to learn how to eyeball the exposure.

Actually it is not as difficult as one might expect, and I still set my DSLR on manual and play with eyeballing exposures just to see if I still have the touch.

Back in the mid 1800's every photographer had to make his/her own photo sensitive plates. Even though every photographer was using basically the same system to make the plates, there was still an element of inconsistancy from one to another, so they each had to experiment to determine the correct exposure for their plates.

When George Eastman began commercially making plates and film in the late 1800's he needed some type of index to standardize the exposure so he could tell photographers how to use his product.

Understanding that the film might be used anywhere on earth it then stood that they needed an index for the brightest light, and a set of guidelines on how to compensate for the conditions where ever one might use the film.

The brightest sunlight occurs at noon at the equator so they tested the film at the equator and determined how much time it took to get a proper exposure with the lens set at f-16. The time was then called the ASA rating for the film, thus if you use your film in bright mid day sun at the equator you could set your aperture to f-16 and your shutter speed to equal the ISO number and you would get a proper exposure.

As you move north of south from the equator the angle of incidence of the sunlight decreases so you have to compensate the exposure, thus in North America when shooting in bright mid day sun we have to open the lens one f-stop, therefore to get a normal exposure we would use the ISO number for shutter speed and set the aperture to f-11. Now divide the time from noon till sundown. In the first one third of that time the exposure is the same as at noon. In the next one third of the time open one f-stop (f-8) and in the last one third open two stops (f5.6).

Next, open one more stop for shade or on a totally overcast day and in mid winter we open one more f-stop.

Keep in mind that if you double shutter speed that will reduce the exposure by one f-stop and if you reduce the shutter speed by 1/2 that has the same effect as opening int aperture one f-stop.

Back in the days of film cameras we had to select the film speed before we set out, but with the modern digital you can change the ISO any time you want to. Here again, if you double the ISO number (I.E. 200 to 400) that has the same effect as opening the aperture one f-stop).

Beleive me, after you spend a couple days shooting by this method you will have an entirely new respect for the built in light meter and exposure controls on modern cameras.

Have you tried Wolf Camera? They are in most of the states, I was only able to locate one in Ada Oklahoma but there still are camera stores around. We have all gone to digital cameras and forget the beauty the a real camera gives as we do not have to have our images developed. Using a real camera takes planning as we do not want to waste any photos with a digital we just shot until we think we have the photo we want, like pros do with real cameras.

I suggest you take a beginners photography course. It's fun and many colleges offer one. Make sure it's for film cameras though.
BTW slides can be scanned and then processed on your computer. There are free programs such as Gimp.
Good luck ... duneshot

In the age of digital cameras, it may seem odd to instruct you how to use "obsolete" 35mm cameras. But old is awesome 35mm camera gear is cheaper than it has ever been.

I picked up a Sony FD-87 on Ebay for $15. It works fine. Better than my FD-73 I paid $400 for.

Another old pro who learned with Nikon cameras. There is a little piece of paper that comes with every roll of film that shows what settings to use without a light meter. Most times it will right on target. Not fancy, but works! There are many tutorials on line to teach you how to use the camera - an old Nikon is a treasure! If you shoot slide film, places like Costco will transfer the slide to digital so you can use your computer to edit the pics. I now shoot digital and use several Nikons with lenses for different types of shots. Have fun with your new toy!The time you spend learning how to use the camera will not be wasted because it is a film camera - most of all of the techniques will also be helpful if you should decide to also shoot digital.