Nikon F5
Life is change - since the beginning of the year I have had my new favorite analog 35mm AF camera. And it's not a canon.
That something like this happens to me once, that I really write it and that I go looking for motifs more and more often with this camera !?
It is a Nikon F5 - the last 35mm analog professional camera from the major manufacturers with interchangeable viewfinders.
But what has happened to me? Of course, I've always looked at Nikon cameras from time to time. A friend of mine and a former work colleague of the last millennium at Foto Brell in Bonn is Nikonian.
And then that: my friend tidied up and found a photo bag that she had been looking for forever. Maja asked me if I wanted the old things, otherwise they would go in the bin. THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN MURDER! And of course I had to save things. First I peeled a Minolta 7xi 28-80mm out of my pocket, well, not my case.
Nikon F5
Then I discovered a Tokina AF At-X 4.5-5.6 80-400mm (rod output) for Nikon. Perfect state! Oh, very nice :-)
Next came a Nikkor AF 3.3-4.5 35-70mm (rod drive) .
Perfect state! It gets even better :-)
The next thing I found was the hammer in this nondescript bag - Nikkor
AF ED 2.8 80-200mm (rod drive, slide zoom) , also in an almost perfect condition!
At the bottom of the bag I saw a Sigma 3.5 18mm (rod drive).
Should I get the bin? Really? But what did my girlfriend need such equipment for? What dark secret was she trying to hide from me? The matter was explained quickly and quite unspectacularly: world tour in the last millennium after graduating from high school and for a minor subject in the USA.
Today Maja takes photos with a smartphone.
Nikon F5
But my Nikon camera saw the light of the 21st century for the first time after years of obscurity, trapped in that nondescript camera bag.
Slowly, it was supposed to go. Nikon - a no-go for me in my youth. But now, of course, these lenses had to refocus light, burn it into silver, and thus be put to their intended use.
In the first step, I bought a Nikon F501 at auction - its design appealed to me even back then as an apprentice at Foto Brell.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Nikon F5
A couple of lenses were added:
Nikkor AF 2.8 35-70mm
My standard lens on the F5.
Nikkor AF 1.8 50mm
High light intensity for just a few euros.
Nikkor AF 3.3-4.5 28-70mm D.
Just bought it for 20 euros.
If at some point I could still get a light shaft finder cheaply ...
Nikon F5
You can download the Nikon F5 instruction manual here - just click on the picture and go to the link ...
Nikon F5
After a while I wanted MORE - GIVE ME MORE: MORE CAMERA - MORE AUTOFOCUS - AND ABOVE ALL MORE SEEKERS!
F4s or F5 - I was torn.
But I discovered an almost perfect F5 for less than 300 euros - that was the case and I adopted my F5.
The DW31 magnifying glass viewfinder for the Nikon F5 is shown here.
It is especially suitable for working in the macro area or for reproduction work because of its 6x magnification and allows precise manual focusing. Of course, it offers all of the camera's automatic functions, including AF. There is one small limitation: the viewfinder does not offer any Color matrix measurement. This is surely to be gotten over.
It enlarges the entire viewfinder image by a factor of 6 and has a built-in diopter correction of +3 to -5 dpt. - ideal for people who wear glasses.
Nikon F5
In the gallery at the bottom of this page you can see some pictures that I have recently taken with the F5.
I didn't scan the black and white negatives myself; I sent the film to a very good photo lab on the island, in Great Britain. This laboratory also fulfills unusual requests and so I always add black and white negative films to the package as an encore - to the chagrin of my account.
