Nikon F Review – Perhaps the most iconic camera of all time is the Nikon F, still a desirable camera for both photographers and collectors after 65 years. Used by pretty much every press packer in its day, much used by photographers in the Vietnam war, the US space program, instantly recognisable in any movie and the preferred camera of many photo journalists.
I used one back in the glory days of film SLRs and still use one today.
So why is it so revered? Is it as good as it’s supposed to be? Is it really indestructible? Lets take a look…
Rallying the troops…A little history lesson on the Nikon F.
It’s a little known fact that Nikon management were not keen on the SLR concept. Nikon had carved out a nice niche for themselves in the rangefinder market and were pitched squarely against Leica who they had their sights set on. Photojournalists in the Korean War stopping over in Japan were amazed at how good Nikons lenses were and had started touting Nikon lenses to their friends. As a result Nikon had already started to eat some of Leicas market for glass so it was natural for Nikon, with Leica in their sights, to focus on rangefinder cameras at the time.
Amazing as it may seem neither Pentax, who pretty much perfected the SLR, nor Nikons management were ever keen on the SLR design. Pentax management felt 35mm would never have the quality required for serious photography and favoured medium format film but in the end they were swayed and the SLR concept gained traction. Nikon management though took a view that the SLR concept was not where serious photographers would spend their cash (remember they were gunning for Leica and many photojournalists back then were Leica users) but were eventually swayed to give it a bash so they adapted their SP rangefinder to accept a mirror and a prism and the F was born. In 1957 the management at Nikon authorised 3 prototypes. These were essentially Nikon SPs with some extra bits bolted on to prove (or disprove) the concept. It must have worked well enough because in 1959 Nikon unveiled the Nikon F. The rest, as they say, is history…
It has been said that it was Konica who started the ball rolling and started making the coffin the German camera industry would be consigned to but it was most definitely Nikon who banged the last nails in. Probably using a Nikon F to hammer those nails down – it’s a very tough old camera.
Building up…. The Nikon F Design
The original Nikon F was designed to use titanium shutter blades but such was the pace of demand that the earliest ones used a cloth shutter. These very early ones are highly desired by collectors and can fetch very large sums if original and clean. Sales took off so fast for the Nikon F that the factory initially couldn’t keep up. Nikon quite literally couldn’t make them fast enough and even senior management could be seen on the factory floor hastily helping to assemble Nikon Fs – penance for being doubtful about the viability of the SLR concept – that’s karma for you.
Nikon went their own way on design of the F. The camera was designed to be entirely modular with replaceable prisms, focus screens and film backs and they opted for a very harsh looking design with squared off edges. This was quite different to other cameras around which had largely favoured a contoured and curved look. Nikon were quite intentional about this – they wanted the camera to stand out.
The camera is fully metal through and through – even the shutter blades are titanium. Under the skin it’s quite a simple beast and it’s designed from the ground up to be tough and reliable. Needless to say there’s no plastic in the design apart from a few minor trim items on later models.
Make no mistake though for all its simplicity and agricultural mechanics the F was primo gear. A standard body with the basic prism and 50mm f1.4 lens would be costing around £3,000 in todays money. Inflation calculators only tell half the story though – In the money of the day a new F with basic configuration was approximately half the price of a brand-new Austin Mini car.
On release the Nikon F had a standard prism but it was quickly upgraded. First there was an external meter that clipped on to the top of the camera, then a metered head which used a separate photocell (Photomic T), later still through the lens metering (Photomic Tn) with its averaged meter pattern and finally the ultimate finder for the F – the Photomic FTn which set the standard for all future Nikon finders with the classic 60% centre weighted metering pattern. It also set the standard for what a Nikon F should look like with its weird, other worldly, asymmetrical look which makes the Nikon F instantly recognisable.
For a more detailed look at Nikon F finders follow take a look at Mir.Com
There were other finders available for the Nikon F including a waist level finder, a sports action finder and a magnifying finder but the Photomic FTn would be the one that almost anyone would recognise but for me it’s quintessential finder for the F.
Nikon would go on and bash out almost a million Nikon Fs over 13 years. Indeed, such was the demand, production carried on for 12 months AFTER the replacement, the F2, appeared as Nikon filled back orders and even new orders from people who demanded the original Nikon F.
Combat…The Nikon F takes on all comers…
The Nikon F quickly became a favourite for photo journalists and press packers. It was used by photographers extensively in Vietnam where its high quality lenses, toughness and reliability was greatly appreciated. Some of the most iconic images from the Vietnam war were shot by photographers like Tim Page, Nick Ut and Don McCullin using Nikon Fs and of course it’s lived on in a clutch of Vietnam War movies like Apocalypse Now and Full metal Jacket.
The camera itself and Nikons design and manufacture takes some of the credit but what really drove the Nikon F to be top dog in the rarefied air of professionals was the marketing genius of Joe Ehrenreich the US distributor. He saw to it that every major photojournalist was seen using a Nikon F at major events. He also saw to it that NASA selected the F for space missions and that it was seen draped around the necks of everyone and anyone who might need serious photography. The Nikon F would make Nikon synonymous with quality professional gear for a long time to come and cement Nikons position as THE professional choice.
Interestingly Nikons marketing was elegant, professional but very subdued even by the standards of the 1950s and 1960s but then when you’re getting your camera seen with everyone who’s anyone including astronauts and Hollywood celebs then magazine adverts can afford to be not much more than ‘stop me and buy one’.
Retirement – The War is Won
The Nikon F was finally discontinued in 1972 – a year after the Nikon F2 replaced it. Apparently Nikon still had backorders on their system. Such was the demand for the F that even with the later, more refined F2 available people out there still wanted the original and so Nikon carried on turning them out for around 12 months after the replacement F2 was available. Production of the F stopped sometime in 1972 after an estimated 862,200 units had been produced. For a camera that sold less than a million units the F had created a huge impact and was instrumental in propelling Nikon to an almost unassailable position for almost 30 years. It had firmly won the war for Nikon but also crucially won the hearts and minds of its customers which would stand Nikon in good stead going forward. Other companies raced to catch up with the Nikon F – Minolta with their technical marvel the X1 which appeared just as the F phased out in favour of the F2. The X1 was a technological tour-de-force but it never found favour with professionals and was too expensive for almost anyone else. Canon, likewise, launched the F1 in 1971 but Canon would play catch up with Nikon for years and would never make more than a small dent in Nikons professional sales. Both Minolta and Canon tried to out engineer Nikon and missed the fact that Nikons foothold was not based on technical supremacy but marketing and the huge lead they had acquired. Canon eventually just gave up and went in a different direction. And no other camera company could ever get a foothold into Nikons professional market until 1989 with the launch of the Canon EOS-1.
This is my Nikon F…There are many like it but this one is mine
I will confess to being pretty passionate about the Nikon F. As I grew up it was the camera that many people, including myself aspired to. It had almost mythical status. Sadly, as I already covered it was priced well out of the range of most including a pimply teenager. I used to look at them in shop windows with my nose pressed against the glass. I eventually owned an Olympus OM-1 which was itself a pro camera but priced less aggressively than Nikon who could wring some more shekels out of people just for the name!
But as luck would have it around 1977 a Nikon F turned up in my local camera store followed by another soon after and the prices were getting a lot lower. This was undoubtedly due to the F2 putting in an appearance and finally getting traction as pros started trading in for F2s and the price of the now semi obsolete F model was reduced to a low enough price for me to afford – I swear when I eventually got one even 2nd hand it felt like I had been held upside down by my ankles by the camera shop and given a shake just to get the last few coins out of me. I don’t know – maybe the camera store owner took pity on a young waif of a girl with a passion for film. In any event I ended up with two of them and some nice lenses and for a very long time they were my primary shooters. I used them extensively for press work and product shoots at one time.
So how does it handle? It’s one heavy lump of a camera for sure weighing in at 1.2kg with a 50mm f1.4 and the FTn finder. I used to lug two of them with a camera bag but these days due to advancing years if I take an F with me it’s likely just the camera and one lens due to the weight. ‘Scuse my weediness I’m sure.
The viewfinder is a bit dated and nothing like as expansive as an Olympus OM-1 or as bright as a Minolta XD. The film advance has a grindy feel and is quite crunchy lacking the smoothness of a Minolta XD or a Canon FTb. Lens mounting is a bit of a faff with the Nikon shuffle – when you change lenses you need to twist the lens aperture to the smallest f stop (eg f16) for easy removal and then when mounting a new lens rotate the lens all of the way to the widest aperture (eg f1.4) and then back to synchronise the meter. Crikey! That’s sounds a faff! You do get used to it but it’s nowhere near as slick as Minoltas MC (Meter Coupled) system where you just plug the lens on and the camera sorts itself out. Nikon did eventually get it right by copying Minolta about 10 years later and calling their system AiS (Auto Indexing System).
Older Nikon lenses all feature the trademark lobster claws on the top of the lens. It’s these claws which link to the meter. You can use lenses that are missing the claws like the much later E Series lenses but you would need to use stop down metering – many later lenses omitted the claws as Nikon moved to the AiS system.
The F doesn’t have a hinged film door. Instead like an old school rangefinder the entire door slides away from the body. In some ways its less fiddly for loading film but in other ways it’s an absolute arse of a job if your mobile and you really do have to be careful around those titanium shutter curtains. The removable back and base was so Nikon could add alternate backs/bases for motor drives and auto winders.
So, given all those apparent down sides why use it? Simple – the quality. It may be less tech, less smooth but it’s super reliable, built like a tank, its huge weight and all metal construction means mirror slap is almost undetectable. So much so you could be forgiven for thinking you were shooting a rangefinder – it’s that solid! And…The camera and lenses always deliver great results.
Is it as tough as they say? I can’t say for sure but I used one of mine to smack a wallaby on the head after Skippy decided to kick a load of small kids to the ground and then started bouncing on them and looked like it fancied its chances against me. One smack on the head from the Nikon F being used like a mace and chain convinced the wallaby that laying down and playing possum might be smarter than to carry on pushing its luck. I have always felt a bit guilty about that – the Nikon could have suffered real damage.
I use mine with vintage Nikon glass from the same period as the camera and while not all of the vintage glass gives as good results compared to later model lenses the massive stand out though is the 50mm f1.4 Nikkor which always delivers. I’d go as far as to say if I could only keep one camera and one lens the Nikon F with its 50mm f1.4 would probably be the one (God forbid I should ever have to choose though).
For you the war is over….Buying a Nikon F today…
If this article has made you want to get out there, get a Nikon F and pretend you’re Dennis Hopper in ‘Apocalypse Now’ or maybe David Hemmings in ‘Blow Up’ then get ready to spend some cash. The Nikon F is tough but like any old camera they were designed to be serviced regularly. Runners are not hard to find that will reliably advance and fire but you may find the shutters are running slow on many of them. Finding an FTn finder with a working meter is also a challenge.
The most basic un-metered prism is paradoxically the most expensive prism of the lot these days. With that said even if a Tn or FTn metered head has a non running meter it’s still perfectly useable as a finder.
The F doesn’t suffer too many major issues as its such a basic camera in its design but like any of the top end classics spares are hard to come by and likely to be expensive. Even people selling complete wrecks usually want £100+.
My current Nikon F (because like an idiot I sold the original pair for pennies as digital took over) was purchased in Tokyo with a working FTn meter head, the much sought after ‘E’ type focus screen with grid lines and a 50mm f1.4 at a cost around £280. The camera was a solid runner but testing back in the UK showed its shutter speeds were off and meter calibration was out. I had mine serviced to get the meter calibrated for use with 1.5v batteries and have the camera given a thorough service. Servicing costs topped £150 for the camera and an additional £50 for the lens so the whole package came in at £480. You can see its not a cheap classic to own but after servicing my own Nikon F shoots perfectly.
I mentioned the meter recalibration. The Nikon FTn head was designed with 1.35v mercury batteries in mind. You can use 1.5v and compensate in your shooting or you can use Zinc-Air batteries and an adaptor (for more information read my article on powering old cameras here). There is some information out there that says that due to the design of the FTn head the camera will compensate for 1.5v batteries – I found that NOT to be the case.
I don’t like the faff of compensating for higher battery voltage as it can lead to mistakes and constantly changing zinc-airs in the meter head is also a faff. The battery chamber in the FTn finder is underneath the meter head requiring the meter head to be removed. It’s not hard but it is a nuisance so I had the meter recalibrated for 1.5 Silver cells which was the best compromise.
The most common issues with old Nikon Fs is a degraded prism caused by foam break down inside the prism, dead meter cells and damaged focus screens. It’s very hard to find a perfect focus screen. Other issues are people poking the very fragile titanium shutter blades. Reject any camera with shutter blade damage as repair costs will be very high.
If you’re going to buy a Nikon F then servicing is a must. Ignore people who will tell you that an F is so indestructible it never needs servicing – chances are it will shoot but poor lubrication and a lack of attention to the finders internal foam seals may soon render the camera inoperable or junk. Spares are expensive and hard to come by so treat the camera with the respect it deserves and get it serviced.
This is the end…
The Nikon F set Nikon up for huge success in the professional market place. As mentioned no other company could get a serious foothold in the professional market for years after the lead that the Nikon F had established – its rivals like the Canon F1 and the Minolta X1 would take 10 years to develop and appear right at the very end of the Nikon Fs production run – Nikon had had a 10 year lead which turned out to be almost impossible to overturn.
Canon, Minolta and Olympus would all make sales in Nikons ‘Pro’ market space but these were no more than a fleabite on the hide of the Nikon elephant. Nikon went on refining their professional products and it would not be until 1989, 30 years later and the launch of the EOS-1 that Canon would finally start to wrest away the professional market from Nikon.
Paradoxically the very success of the F would be Nikons undoing. Nikons downfall would, in part, be the struggle to keep compatibility with the Nikon F lens mount in a fast changing market made even tougher with the development of auto-focus. The desire to keep the F mount had its parallel with Pentax years earlier who persisted with the M42 mount – by the time Pentax woke up and delivered the ‘K’ mount they had been overtaken. Pentax would never recover – and neither would Nikon.
To their credit Nikon tried hard at keeping stuff compatible but it came at the price of not being easily able to adopt new technology – like many companies being at the top for so long proved in some ways a disadvantage. Arrogance creeps in and never losing can be a weakness.
Nikon compatibility guides today look like a hologrammatic score for an opera overlaid with Stephen Hawking’s calculations for Black Hole radiation. Canon bit the bullet and just dumped their history and went with an entire new generation of cameras – the EoS and this would enable them to develop new technology faster. Eventually Canons superior Auto-Focus technology made possible by the EoS mount would be the undoing of Nikon aided and abetted by Nikon clinging on to the F mount for far too long.
The Nikon F though lives on as one of the truly iconic classic cameras. It retains a mystique which many later cameras just lack and still retains its near mythic status and an association with glamour which gives it a unique position amongst classic Japanese film cameras from the golden age.
Mel is one of the driving forces behind High 5 Cameras and writes all our articles.
Starting serious photography back in 1972. Over the years she got to shoot film with most of the major brands in 35mm and large format as both a studio photographer and content provider for websites in the early life of the web. These days she is rediscovering photography and has become the GOTO person for knowledge on camera repair advice.
I borrowed $465 from my dad in 1974 to buy an FTn with 50 1.4. I still have the body! I’ve been thru and F2, a slew of Pentax’s, Bronica ETR, Hasselblad, then found my way back to Nikon digital. To have my original Nikon with my original 35 f/2 and an 85 f/1.8 is a real joy. I loved your article!! I have a z50, z6ii, and z8 now with about 10 Z mount lenses. I’m glad Nikon made the switch to the ZMount. I’m waiting for a 28 f/1.4 that’s as good as the AF mount one that is unmatched in quality and sharpness.