Nikon F5 film camera

The Nikon F5 professional film camera

First of all why did I buy an F5 in this digital world ?

Film camera's can be found very cheap now. If you ever dreamed of a high end film camera, this is the moment to buy. This is what I did. I found a good copy of the Nikon F5 via the internet. The camera is huge and very heavy (also very stable), has one of the best AF motors ever, and is fast, very fast. I fell in love with film again... It is just a fantastic experience to use professional stuff at a very reasonable price. Highly recommended.

Top view

Front view

The pros

- build quality - incredible
- weather sealing - pro spec
- user interface, Nikon look and feel, relatively easy to use
- AF super fast (I mean REALLY fast)
- locking system for most buttons to avoid mistakes
- integrated grip for portrait shooting
- fantastic viewfinder with replaceable prism
- shutter autodiagnostic and alignment system
- can be found used at a very reasonable price
- is using 8 standard AA batteries (rechargeable or not)

The cons

- pretty heavy
- will probably not be supported by Nikon anymore (maintenance within a few years from now)
- maintenance and repair incredibly expensive if needed
- complex CSM (customer settings) menus if you lost the documentation
- thumbwheels not repeated on the grip - only the shutter button is available

A few more observations: I am using different types of film (Black and white, black and white color processing, color slides and color negatives) that I scan on a Nikon Coolscan V semi-pro 35mm film scanner. This gives me reasonable pictures at an average resolution of about 20MPixels. I get much more detail than with any 35mm/APS-C format digital camera. However that process can be pretty tedious and should not be used for casual shooting. Because of the effort involved (time, selecting the right parameters, doing the right post-processing), I would reserve this for special occasions, when you want the film look, the higher resolution, or the extra dynamic you get with film. Don't forget the time you'll loose to process the film or to have it processed.

Here are a few examples of scanned pictures: First one is a black and white negative scanned on a crappy scanner. Film is Kodak 400 BW Professional C-41 color processing Nikon F5+70-200VR 2.8 lens

Second one is a color picture also on a crappy scanner. Film is Fuji Superia 400 ISO consumer grade Nikon F5+70-200VR 2.8 lens

Last one is a link to a very high res pic (20MP) - the JPEG file is more than 8 MB ! Not much processing done, just out of the scanner.