The Break of Dawn

Encountering a Legend–

One of the most revered cameras in the past 50 years is the Nikon F. Canon, Minolta/Sony, Pentax, Contax, and maybe even Leica users will recognize this camera as one of the most reliable and rock-solid systems there ever was. Many people are so amused with the fact that their cameras can take different focusing screens now or some angle-finder attachment. This is nothing compared to what cameras like the F can do. You can practically detach almost everything until all that’s left is the mirror box, the shutter mechanism and the main body. Once you do that though, it’s a question of what you attach. The body itself is but the heart of the system and a user can add whatever is deemed necessary for a given shoot. Most of the professional bodies had optional viewfinders like the waist level finder which is the default finder in twin-lens reflex bodies and many medium format systems (more about that soon). There is also a large angle-finder and, in the case of the older cameras, a prism that has metering built in. Take note that in those days, the camera didn’t have a built-in light meter as they do today.

Erick Lirios

This approach was really a system’s approach and people who bought a Nikon F or like bodies from other manufacturers were really buying the system and the body itself was but the entrance into it. Some people now find it a bit weird that shooting a hundred frames needed the camera’s back door to be removed and replaced with one that incorporated a bulk loader of sorts. This had a big roll of film on one side good for a hundred frames and there was take-up spook on the other side to take the exposed frames. Can you imagine how big that camera would be from side to side? After the hundred shots are done, you have to reload the whole thing. A far cry from the memory card reloads that people now experience. (Geez, if you still get caught running out of memory card space in this time of ultra-low-cost memory cards, there must be something wrong with you.)

The most common Nikon F outfit, however, was one with the eye-level prism and hardly anything else. This was a time when photojournalists (to the core, still probably one of the fastest thinking individuals around in the photography world) used hand-held light meters or could very well determine exposure in their heads. Unlike what we’d have today with our viewfinder cluttered with exposure and focusing details, the view inside the F with this prism was really clean with nothing to distract a person’s composition.

Those who thought they needed metering without the bother of the hand-held option had the Photomic prism available. Remember we talked about the Nikon lens having this rather unusual attachment on top? The Photomic prism was the reason. There’s this slider that that thingamajig will hang on to so that the prism knows what aperture is being used. Some people have referred to this combo as the Nikon F Photomic (I did) but really, it’s still just an F with the accessory prism.

With metering available, why did some people still prefer the plain-vanilla eye-level prism? Again, these gave the simplest viewfinder image and if you knew your exposure stuff by heart anyway, having to rely on a meter even within the prism could slow things down. Besides, these guys knew their film, apertures, shutter speeds, and ISOs well enough that they probably beat the meters anyway and the meter was nothing more than a confirmation of what they already knew. (Okay, maybe we’re gushing a bit much about these guys but they really typified how the human was the master of the machine and not the other way around. These guys were photographers not gadget collectors who sometimes shot a photo. Bato-bato sa langit…Mag-shoot naman kayo!)

So how does one use it?

One of the first things to throw you off with this is the fact that there isn’t really a film door. You have to remove the whole film back that actually just slides off. You turn a switch underneath the camera and the thing is released. Why have this and not the usual door? It may really be a question of preventing light leaks. If this was such a great idea, then why didn’t it continue? Convenience is sometimes more important and it can be a real pain if you’re running for your life or trying to capture a moment and you’re busy changing rolls. More, if you fail to secure the back, that thing may just slide off at a very wrong moment. Nikon was, of course, very successful in plugging light leaks in its cameras that this eventually became a non-issue.

Since the prism was interchangeable also, there had to be a way to easily do this. There’s this button at the back of the camera that does just that. Press the button and off it goes.

Notice also that the prism on the F has no shoe to accommodate a flash. A flash has to connect to an adapter that mounts on top of the lens rewind crank. That really seems inconvenient yet it was continued all the way to the beautiful F3. Imagine having to remove the flash adapter to rewind the film and then putting it on again once a new roll was put in its place.

This beautiful specimen of the F was found in the P&G Photographic Centre in Singapore’s Peninsula Shopping Centre. Andrew Phan was kind enough to allow me to photograph this unit even though I wasn’t buying it. (Okay, I did buy two tripod heads from him but still.) His shop had everything from older Leica’s, Contaxes, Yashicas, Canons, Minoltas, Nikons, Hasselblads, and Mamiyas. They have a lot of film stuff and even a lot of digital stuff. How much is the F? The one with the eye-level prism is SGD1180 (around Php40120) while the Photomic costs SGD600 more. Do you need one? Maybe not, but when a legend is around you, you may not have a choice – especially if you have that much cash lying around catching dust.