What's the Appeal of a Nikon RF?

Nikkor 50mm F1.4, wide-open on the S3-2000, too:

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I have to say the only thing I find annoying about Nikon RF is that changing aperture changes the focus unless you are holding the focus wheel steady, but maybe that's because I'm more used to Leica.

I'm picking up a S3 2000 at the end of the month, so maybe I'll find more things to be annoyed about 😉
 
Livesteamer said:
Being the happy owner of an 800 pound toy train that burns coal has helped me realize that most of our hobbys are not logical but more like a love affair. I shoot Leica M mostly now but in 1975 the local camera shop sold me my first rangefinder, a Nikon S with 50mm f2 and four Nikon cassetttes. A wonderful camera I still have and use now and then. Joe
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An 800 lb toy train that burns coal? Please post pictures. Can you ride it?
 
Brian Sweeney said:
I'll try sum this up.

Appeal of a Nikon.

Quality, reliability, form, and function

In the right hands, it delivers photographs with quickness and ease.

The same can be said of Leica, Canon, and many other cameras. The same qualities are present in all of them. I see no need to select one and denigrate the others. Unless the only feature about a camera that appeals to you is its name.
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No one is denigrating anything. If you were new to RF and chose a system, I was wondering why one would pick Nikon.

I thought the biggest drawback for the Nikon RF is the lack of lens selection. For the Leica M, you have M lenses made by Leica, Cosina, & Minolta, and screw lenses made by Leica, Canon, Nikon, among others. Brilliant lenses made by Nikon were made for both Nikon RF and LSM mounts. Cosina lenses for Nikon RF seem to have less availability.

I appreciate the feedback. For users, it's one or more of the following:
  • a 2nd camera for something different
  • perceived quality or longevity.
  • easier loading
  • 1:1 finder
  • better coating on old lenses.
 
My go anywhere S2,.. Someday I will get a 3.5cm f2.5 Nikkor lens for it and leave the J-12 on the Kiev, but 70% of the shots are taken with the 5 cm Nikkor lens.

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Al Kaplan said:
There were a lot of Jews, and others, who wanted nothing to do with any German products after WW-II, but would buy a Japanese camera. I guess that's still true to some extent.
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I call bull****. it's the second time you come up w/ BS about jews.
first you accused BH of racism and now this ...idiocy.
i am jewish and i never heard of such thing.
you say nikon gainned a market share because jews would not use a Leica?
some jews would not use a rolleiflex in the 50s?
Avedon?
why would those jews use a japanese camera then?
 
chris00nj said:
No one is denigrating anything. If you were new to RF and chose a system, I was wondering why one would pick Nikon.

I thought the biggest drawback for the Nikon RF is the lack of lens selection. For the Leica M, you have M lenses made by Leica, Cosina, & Minolta, and screw lenses made by Leica, Canon, Nikon, among others. Brilliant lenses made by Nikon were made for both Nikon RF and LSM mounts. Cosina lenses for Nikon RF seem to have less availability.

I appreciate the feedback. For users, it's one or more of the following:
  • a 2nd camera for something different
  • perceived quality or longevity.
  • easier loading
  • 1:1 finder
  • better coating on old lenses.
Click to expand...

Recently, for reasons too long to post, I went to the market to find one RF to be my primary one, the one that gets 99% of my time until I die. I saw and tried them all, and I after pondering a lot, I decided the best one for me was the S3 2000- not the SP, 'cause unlike most, I really like using external finders. And anyway, the SP does not have an inboard 21mm one. But both of them offer what I percieved as the best build quality there is available in the market now.

Lack of lens selection? Throw a 21mm Biogon, a 35mm Biogon (or a Nikkor 2.5, or 1.8), and 50-1.4, 85-2.0, 105 and 135 Nikkors and you would be hard pressed to find yourself "underlensed". Really, I don't need anything else. Heck, 99.99% of the time I just use the 21 and the 50!
 
Colker, I'm just reporting the facts as I know them. I am Jewish and spent a dozen years married to a woman from Karlsruhe. The marriage didn't work but well over a dozen years later we're still best friends, have keys to one another's houses and cars, her dogs consider me Daddy, and her folks still send me a few packs of cigarette tobacco with her Christmas package. She and her dad didn't like going to church so I'd take her mom to the Lutheran church when they were in town. The minister back then, who was a friend of mine, as well as a good percentage of the congregation, speak Geman. On the flip side my son is an ordained rabbi, and he also gets along just fine with them. Now they're too old to travel. I miss them.

Back when Claudia and I were about to get married her dad asked me how I as a Jew could accept him into my life knowing that he'd fought in Hitler's army. I said "Fritz, I know that you can put a rifle in the hands of just about any 18 year old kid and say "These are bad people. Shoot them!" and he will."

I also remember the post war years, at least into the 1970's when a lot of Jews wouldn't buy German products. There might still be some of them around. I got my first Leica, a IIIC, in 1963, shortly before my 21st birthday, followed a year later with a Rollieflex. I remember getting a lot of static from some Jewish photographers at the time, mostly people from my parent's generation.

B&H is owned by orthodox Jews but they carry German cameras as well as Japanese cameras. And don't forget that the United States herded Japanese-Americans into camps and they didn't know if they were going to live or die. What about the Allies fire bombing of Dresden or our the use of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as testing grounds for two different types of never before tried out atomic bombs? Some scientists at the time were afraid it might start a chain reaction that would destroy the planet.

It's over sixty years now since that war was over. Let's stop making accusations based on reactive prejudice rather than known facts. We've even managed to make peace with the countries of the former Soviet Union, and the once villified Red Chinese are now our biggest trading partner. I think that's all pretty damned wonderful. "Let sleeping dogs lie" is something you should seriously think about. Then perhaps you could learn when to use upper case letters in your writing. I always thought that Jews could learn to do that. I guess that there are exceptions.
 
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>>The pairing of a Nikon F with a 105, and a Nikon SP with a 35, is just the most perfect shooting setup there ever was, in my opinion.<<

I've read a couple of articles from the late '50s leaving the impression that National Geographic's standard 35mm kit for a few years was Nikon SPs with a 35/1.8 and 105/2.5
As has been discussed above, "lack of lens choice" for Nikon RFs isn't significant to photography, because the available lenses are still among the finest lenses available for any system.

Nikon's reputation was built on its lenses, not its cameras. In the early 1950s, a great many people considered the Nikkors to be superior to Leitz -- sharper and sometimes several stops faster. The quality of Nikkors and other Japanese lenses forced Leitz to compete with improved designs.

We've discussed the 21/4.5 Biogon. Here are a few examples:

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Colker,

There was some upset a couple of years ago about VW using jewish labor during WWII.

I've seen many people, not just jewish background, who spent a lot of time walking through what is now the EU that did not want to buy German cars.

While it is important to learn how to move on, it is equally important that we never forget. It's a delicate balance that often many of us mess up.

B2 (;->
 
I don't know what is so good about the Nikon RF. I have an S2 and frankly, I prefer using my Kiev III-the Nikon viewfinder is a knockout but the shutter doesn't sound right and the shutter release is in the wrong place anyway AND it won't take Kiev lenses..thats a cross in each box.
 
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