Say what you will about Nikon, that company commits to shit!
2019 marked the 60th anniversary of the F mount. The bayonet mount that they still
use today on their DSLRs. With this amount of backward compatibility,
you can use an insane amount of vintage lenses on modern bodies, and it works the other way around
too, making vintage bodies compatible with newer lenses. As I have a collection of
Nikon vintage lenses for shooting video, and i'm into shooting film as well, I thought
I should probably get a 35mm film camera to use my Nikon lenses on. My goal was to get
my hands on the venerable F3, but in my research, a model that's considered to be a little bit of a
black sheep of Nikon's flagship line kind of stuck out to me... the divisive F4.
Released in 1988, 30 years into the F mount's reign, the F4 was revolutionary. Designed
by the famous car designer Giorgetto Gui.. Giorgetto Giororah-eh, uh? Gi-Gi-Giugarro?
Giorgetto Guigarro!
This is the guy who designed the DeLorean.
It was unlike anything before it and unlike anything after it...
like the DeLorean. It kind of encapsulates the transition point between what SLRs were, and
what they've become. And, as with many things that are ahead of their time people fucking hated it.
In fact, Nikon continued to make the F3 throughout its entire run. But, this thing is an absolute
marvel of 1980s engineering. Even though it is probably the most complex SLR ever made,
with 1750 parts, it manages to give the impression of being a solid object. It looks like a Ferrari
and feels like a gun.
Mine is the F4s, which has an added vertical grip. It takes a whopping six AA batteries.
The thing is a damn beast - and it's also a lot of fun to use. The F4 strikes this
perfect balance between automatic and manual. Even though it does have a ton of automatic features,
everything is represented by physical controls. One of my favourite things about this camera is
that all of the controls lock. You don't have to worry about any of your settings
being changed by taking it in and out of your bag, or just brushing it up against something.
Let's take a look at some of the features.
It has a motorized film transport, losing the film advanced level of older models.
Getting a roll of film in and out of this thing is as easy as it gets. Continuous
shooting up to 6 frames per second. It has a max shutter speed of 1/8000s. Tracking auto focus,
compatible not only with the screwdrive AF-D lenses of the time, but the discrete
motor AF-S lenses to come out nearly a decade later. Matrix metering, exposure compensation,
and possibly most of all... ergonomics. This is when they started making cameras shaped to fit
in your hand. Although it is technically compatible with the newer g-type lenses,
because of their lack of a physical aperture ring, you are limited to program or shutter
priority modes... but they do work. It can use glass made 30 years before its
release as well as 30 years after. Completely insane in the age of planned obsolescence.
So, in conclusion, the Nikon F4 is a camera that everyone hated at the time,
but it has aged extremely well. Because some of that hate is still
there, you can get one for a really good price. You can probably get one
cheaper than either an F3 or an F5 because it just has this like this black mark on it.
But, don't let that stop you from getting your own, because the F4 is a wicked awesome camera.
OK, that's it that's the end of the video. I hope you liked it, if you do, hit like. If you
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