Disappointed_Horse
Well-known
Enjoy!
Tribute to the Nikon F
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steveyork
Well-known
A plain prism F is what taught me Sunny 16. For just a picture taking machine, great values on the used market these days. I made the mistake though of once zooming in on a picture taken with an M and the same taken with an F. Shutter vibration is real!! True for every SLR I suppose. Anyway, cheap way to shoot an original black paint camera.
wlewisiii
Veteran
I could see getting a plain prism F. I always hated the photomic heads 😉
Horatio
Masked photographer
The prisms fetch more than a body these days.
wlewisiii
Veteran
Trust me, that's why I only window shop for one 😉
steveyork
Well-known
Yeah, the plain prism handled like a totally different camera from the metered prism. The metered prism look cool, but so big, blocky and heavy in comparison. The plain prism on the other hand is M-ish size (w/o lens).
38Deardorff
Well-known
Godfrey
somewhat colored
A number of years ago now, a friend of mine from the Pentax mailing list sent a note: 'I found in the basement an open box with a Nikon F in it. It must have belonged to a friend of mine who passed away some years ago. The lens is missing, can't find it, and the ever-ready case top half is missing. But the selenium meter attachment is with it ... who knows whether it works or not? Anyway, what should I do with it?' He ended up giving it to me as being the least PITA of his options.
When I first started doing photography, my grandfather loaned me his '49 Rolleiflex Automat. My mom gave me her Argus C3, replaced a few years earlier by my father's gift of a Kodak Retina IIIc. I used those two cameras through my first year in High School and salivated over the photo magazines every month looking at the then-new SLRs .. Mamiya/Sekor, Pentax, Minolta, et al ... never dared look at the Nikons, they were just way too expensive for me to fantasize about.
My uncle was another camera enthusiast and saw me jones'ing for an SLR. One day he asks me, "How much money have you got?" It was mid-Summer and I had just barely saved a hundred bucks by getting little odd jobs around the neighborhood. "Give it to me, I'll get you a camera." Two days later he stopped by and handed me a brown paper bag with a Nikon F Photomic FTn in it, fitted with Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens, all wrapped in its brown leather never-ready case. "Enjoy, don't tell anyone where you got it." I cocked my eyebrow at him; he winked and sped off in his sports car. I loved that camera and used it for six or seven years before selling it to a friend to buy the latest camera jewel I could afford ... yeah, equipment addiction runs deep.
So when Charlie gave me the old plain prism F that was so full of dirt it would barely fire the shutter, I just had to bring it back to life. The local camera tech was an old German guy whom I'd become friendly with. 'Ach, dis vun is a mess! But I kan fix it vor you. It vill cost a bit..." He did a superlative job of completely dismantling it, cleaning all the crud out of every nook and cranny, and making it work like new. For the princely sum of $170. ... Old Friedrich never knew how to price his work properly. I paid him, and gave him a $100 gift certificate for the restaurant I knew he liked. I picked up a nice old Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/3.5 and M-tube, and an Nikkor 28mm f/2 AI, and a Nikkor 85mm f/1.8. The old F takes great photos ... still have it today, although I gave the 85/1.8 to another friend who jones'ed after my old F Photomic FTn so much over all the years since that he eventually bought one in the '00s; he's still never used it or the lens but, eh? what the heck. I still have and still enjoy the occasional moment taking the F out for a walk and listening to the loud, smooth clatter of its shutter.
I remember, back in high school days, standing up on a tall ladder, shooting stage photos with the F when the rickety old ladder started to come apart under me. Nothing else in my hands, so I used it as a hammer to bang the side of the ladder back together to keep from falling about ten feet. Once back on the ground, I shook it a bit to see if anything was loose, nope, and just kept shooting with it. The dents on the baseplate were a proud reminder of the old war horse it was. The meter wasn't even thrown off.
Young and foolish, yes. But those old Nikon Fs were tough things, and easy to strip and service. I still love the one I have now. Too bad the old selenium cell meter no longer works, and I can't find anyone to service it anymore.
G
When I first started doing photography, my grandfather loaned me his '49 Rolleiflex Automat. My mom gave me her Argus C3, replaced a few years earlier by my father's gift of a Kodak Retina IIIc. I used those two cameras through my first year in High School and salivated over the photo magazines every month looking at the then-new SLRs .. Mamiya/Sekor, Pentax, Minolta, et al ... never dared look at the Nikons, they were just way too expensive for me to fantasize about.
My uncle was another camera enthusiast and saw me jones'ing for an SLR. One day he asks me, "How much money have you got?" It was mid-Summer and I had just barely saved a hundred bucks by getting little odd jobs around the neighborhood. "Give it to me, I'll get you a camera." Two days later he stopped by and handed me a brown paper bag with a Nikon F Photomic FTn in it, fitted with Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens, all wrapped in its brown leather never-ready case. "Enjoy, don't tell anyone where you got it." I cocked my eyebrow at him; he winked and sped off in his sports car. I loved that camera and used it for six or seven years before selling it to a friend to buy the latest camera jewel I could afford ... yeah, equipment addiction runs deep.
So when Charlie gave me the old plain prism F that was so full of dirt it would barely fire the shutter, I just had to bring it back to life. The local camera tech was an old German guy whom I'd become friendly with. 'Ach, dis vun is a mess! But I kan fix it vor you. It vill cost a bit..." He did a superlative job of completely dismantling it, cleaning all the crud out of every nook and cranny, and making it work like new. For the princely sum of $170. ... Old Friedrich never knew how to price his work properly. I paid him, and gave him a $100 gift certificate for the restaurant I knew he liked. I picked up a nice old Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/3.5 and M-tube, and an Nikkor 28mm f/2 AI, and a Nikkor 85mm f/1.8. The old F takes great photos ... still have it today, although I gave the 85/1.8 to another friend who jones'ed after my old F Photomic FTn so much over all the years since that he eventually bought one in the '00s; he's still never used it or the lens but, eh? what the heck. I still have and still enjoy the occasional moment taking the F out for a walk and listening to the loud, smooth clatter of its shutter.
I remember, back in high school days, standing up on a tall ladder, shooting stage photos with the F when the rickety old ladder started to come apart under me. Nothing else in my hands, so I used it as a hammer to bang the side of the ladder back together to keep from falling about ten feet. Once back on the ground, I shook it a bit to see if anything was loose, nope, and just kept shooting with it. The dents on the baseplate were a proud reminder of the old war horse it was. The meter wasn't even thrown off.
Young and foolish, yes. But those old Nikon Fs were tough things, and easy to strip and service. I still love the one I have now. Too bad the old selenium cell meter no longer works, and I can't find anyone to service it anymore.
G
chuckroast
Well-known
Bought my first one (a Black Apollo FtN) in the early 1970s. I still have a black Apollo F (not the same one) with both a working Photomic FtN, plain prism, and WL finder, and use it with some regularity. It's wild that my AI and AIS lenses work on all my Nikon film bodies as well as D750 digital.
Here's one of the very first pictures I ever took with my original F - scan of silver print. Negative from 1971, print is more recent:
Here's one of the very first pictures I ever took with my original F - scan of silver print. Negative from 1971, print is more recent:
Horatio
Masked photographer
I lusted for a Photomic model as a teenager, then got one pretty cheap after college. Still have it. Now I'm eyeing a standard prism F in Japan. Maybe for my birthday. I just bought a FM2n and a FE.
David Murphy
Veteran
A phenomenal camera - and the eyelevel prism rules!
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