[Music] [Music] [Music] Hello and welcome to Analog Insights. In today's episode, Jules and I review the Nikon F4, a 35-millimeter single-lens reflex camera introduced in 1988. The F4 is Nikon's first professional

camera coming with full autofocus capabilities. Interestingly, the camera also accepts all the lenses in the Nikon lineup, almost all the lenses in the Nikon lineup, between 1959 all the way up to the present day. Like its predecessor, the F3, the F4 was

designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro. And while the F3, already introduced in 1980, was built until 2001, the F4 was already discontinued in 1997 after the F5, so the new flagship camera in the Nikon lineup hit the market in 1996.

In terms of its size, handling, and also control layout, the F4 could be described as a transition camera in many ways because it kind of blends and um kind of the newer and future-oriented features with the more traditional features like having dedicated dials and knobs for features like exposure

compensation. And it also didn't have any display like later models that kind of showed all the the features, but actually had the control knobs for it. So while on the one hand, you have the autofocus electronics and LCD display inside the viewfinder, a programmed auto

exposure and matrix metering, so really advanced future-oriented features, it retained all these dedicated dials for shutter and aperture speed, but also metering and focusing modes as well as the exposure compensation. Here on the top of the camera, we took the camera out to an aircraft

museum near Munich more or less precisely four years after we went there for the first time doing our Olympus Zone One review and afterwards we also took a little photo walk in the English Garden and also shot a macro of a watch dial and in total we exposed two rolls of film

Delta 400 and one Kodak E100 films [Music] Do [Music] [Music] The Nikon F4 established a new standard form factor for all advanced film and digital SLRs that came afterwards for instance the battery grip here on the

right side has become a norm also that you have around the shutter release certain switches like an on off switch and a mode selector these kinds of features have become a norm by now and the Nikon F4 was really the first one to introduce it in such a fashion

It is made out of 1,700 parts so a really complex fully electronic um camera and yet kind of the high quality um of the components but also the weather sealing and and uh the solid construction ensured that most F4s until today can be

considered quite reliable and are still in fairly good conditions despite the fact they were typically used by professional photographers and in that case heavily of course the defining feature of the Nikon F4 is its TTL phase detection autofocus with only one point here in the center

but still was fairly advanced at the time it also has some autofocus tracking capabilities that we will discuss in a minute so this was really impressive and as briefly mentioned it introduced many Nikon especially the professional mechan photographers for the first time to autofocus

and required kind of a reaction to it and some of course stuck to the F3 and its manual focus um setup and others embraced the new capabilities and jumped at the opportunity to use autofocus for professional use as well. All the advanced features of the camera like also the auto-make film

advance with up to 5.6 frames per second or something at least of between four and five or 5.7 frames per second meant that the camera required a lot more power supply than a more traditional slower camera and because of that it's important to

briefly touch on the different battery grips that it supports and also other power supplies that it can come with. And the most compact and basic version is the so-called MB20 battery a pack or battery grip that comes with or is run by four double-A

batteries and here we have an example of it. And it's really compact, really light and but it's only limited to four frames per second and the fastest and should continue shooting mode. Then there is the most common M high-speed MB21 battery pack

which comes with both a base plate and a grip on the side with each three slots for three AAA batteries or NiCd um batteries. And this one shoots up to 5.7 frames per second, so the really high-speed version. Then there is an external power supply

the MB22 which really needs an external um yeah current uh power supply um so it's maybe interesting for studio use for instance. And then there's the most advanced and also very, very big one um the MB23 with yeah all sorts of additional

accessories that can be attached and so on and what is interesting here is that the MB-21s, so the one that we also have here and which is the most common one, also for the first time introduced that vertical shutter release button. So if you

keep your camera vertically, you can press the other button. And of course, this is a feature that we still have around until today. In addition to the different battery packs, they're interchangeable viewfinders, focusing screens, and various data backs, and even the viewfinder eyepieces, so here on the back can be

exchanged and are compatible until today. So you can theoretically switch between a modern multi-coated eyepiece and the traditional versions all the way back to the F3. The Nikon PB-6 bellows accessory that we used here to shoot a macro of a

watch dial, um, can be used to shoot extreme close-ups and of course typically there are also special lenses for this available, but in our case, we just use the regular 50 millimeter f/1.8 uh standard lens, and this still worked fairly well in our opinion.

In terms of lenses, the F4 is compatible with almost all manual focus and autofocus lenses for the F-mount, with G-type lenses, which do not have an aperture ring, the lack of an electronic aperture control limits its use a little bit. These lenses

when you attach them are automatically used in the program mode, so this mode is immediately selected by the camera as well and you can see that in the viewfinder display. And the F4 does not provide support for Nikon's vibration reduction system and I

I would recommend for exact compatibility with your lenses to take a look at the F4s manual because it would be simply too much to go through all the lenses um in the history of Nikon in the lineup, but it's really almost all lenses that are compatible to it, which

is really surprising for for such an in-between camera that really brought about new features and autofocus capabilities. [Music] The F4 was Nikon's first professional camera with a vertically traveling metal blade shutter with a shutter balancer to reduce noise and friction. This particular shutter was a further

development than by Nikon of the famous copper square shutter that already had a reputation for its great reliability and precision, and Nikon kind of topped that with the version that was created for the F4 here with the shutter speeds ranging from four seconds all the way up to one 8 000

of a second. So really, really fast for the time, plus a bulb mode. What is also interesting is that this kind of metal blade shutter became the norm for later 1980s and 1990s SLR cameras and really the dominant type of shutter

and what I also find interesting is the flash synchronization speed that is supported here with this particular one that goes all the way up to 1/250 of a second. So really, really fast, which can be quite convenient depending on the situation in which you want to use your

flash. The camera comes without any display, so all the features have dedicated knobs and dials, and the only display that the camera has is inside the viewfinder, and that is very sleek and beautifully designed, but you should be aware of the fact that some cameras come with so-called LCD

bleeding, and if you Google that, you can learn all about it. It's one of the most, um, yeah, Google's term in combination with the Nikon F4. It's an effect that just happens due to shock, high temperatures, or simply age. And if you're on the used market

looking for the Nikon F4, you might want to look out for that feature and for images that go through the finder and where you can see the LCD to determine whether they are affected with that effect or not. You can see it here now. I find these little blobs of

black, um, that are coming out of the LCD on the left side of the top of the camera. There's a film rewind lever and an ISO dial which ranges from six all the way up to 6400, so quite a range. And it also has um an

automatic DX setting here marked in red, which automatically reads the film speed um if the film that you inserted is DX coded. If not, of course, it doesn't work and you have to set the ISO manually. On the standard prism finder here, the camera offers three metering options:

spot, center-weighted, and the five-segment matrix metering, which we mostly used in our use case here, which was fairly advanced also for the time. Next to it, there is a possibility to compensate for the density of the different focusing screens that can be

put into the camera, which is also really interesting because since it's using TTL metering, so through-the-lens metering, it of course also is affected by the focusing screen that you put in there. So you can basically look at the focusing screen and the mat, and it's attached, um, manual

and then know okay I need to compensate a little bit here because of its density and you can simply set that using this dial here on the side on the right side of the top of the camera you can choose between five exposure modes manual exposure aperture

priority shutter priority a program mode and interestingly a program mode that prefers the faster shutter speeds and this is of course really convenient when you are shooting slower lenses and you want to avoid having accidentally blurred images you just use this program mode and then it ensures that you have a

certain minimum shutter speed and you don't go too low if you're lacking any light in a certain situation then there is a round the shutter release button there is a lever for the different shutter release modes the different shutter modes a single shot mode and three continuous shooting

modes that continuous high which lets you shoot the really high fast frames per second rates of up to 5.7 frames per second then the continuous low and one for silent shooting as well and there's also a self timer mode as well and interestingly at the back of

the camera you can still use the traditional cable release as well there's a traditional cable release connector um which we found interesting and it is another nod in the direction it's a really a transition camera that offers all these different features here next to the shutter speed dial on top of

the camera is a exposure compensation dial that ranges from plus two to minus two in third steps and we found ourselves using it quite a bit especially when shooting slide film and having difficult lighting situations we found it very convenient that it is a

dial that you can just turn and use and you don't have to go into a setting and look at the display and all that The camera also features various buttons and dials on the front as well so next to the button to remove the lens you can choose between three

different focusing modes manual focusing continuous and single focus mode Um interestingly the continuous focusing tracking works surprisingly well for this late 1980s technology in our opinion Um it of course had the typical focus hunting autofocus hunting effects here and there but overall it felt pretty advanced and

pretty good and I was positively surprised to buy it Um on the right side of the lens Um there is an automatic exposure lock an autofocus lock a mirror lockup and a depth of field preview button and interestingly the autofocus and automatic exposure locks can also be

tied together and that can be really convenient In general you can say these buttons here in the front are really easily accessible with your middle or ring fingers really are nice ergonomics from our perspective and overall it's a really nice camera with all these

different dials and they snuggle nicely into place and really feel high quality overall [Music] So what about our personal impressions The Nikon F4 is a fairly compact camera given all its capabilities and only costs around 250 to 300 euros on the

second-hand market at the moment and it also feels surprisingly high quality Personally it reminded me at first glance of the 1990s console the Sega Game Gear and because of the kind of the texture of the material and how it feels in your hands

um but it really feels nicely and it feels like you can play with it for hours so to speak without um yeah being concerned that it might be used too much and looking at the today's um models available on the used market you can

still see that these cameras are over 30 years old and are in many cases in perfectly fine conditions and were really built to last Judd's mentioned that it reminded him of the late 1980s sci-fi movies like Aliens too and it could be an equipment coming

straight out of that that film and um i think he has a point here as well personally i really like that the camera comes with all these knobs and dials and the only thing that takes a little bit getting used to is all the lock functions because for most of these

dials you also have a lock function and of course that is to prevent you from accidentally changing any kind of important settings during shooting or putting it on or away um and this takes some getting used to um but once you get your hang of it

it is really really convenient and interestingly it's the kind of feature that got lost in further iterations in in the Nikon uh professional camera development so if you look at the F5 and then later the F6 they are slowly losing these um lock functions and here you

really have a camera that has it for each of the important features so that is important to you and your shooting style the F4 is definitely worth taking a look um as well um what i also like is the manually triggered film rewind um with the ro2

and R1 here on the side to then yeah start the rewind process and in many ways the camera fits really really nicely between the all manual F3 and the much more advanced F5 that came later um so it really is blending the different eras

and for us a real transition camera and if you were curious about camera history and seeing certain first some certain features that were used for the first time in action and experiencing how Nikon established them in many in many cases on a really high level from the

start it is also historically an interesting camera to look at so overall we were really really impressed by the Nikon F4 and had a lot of fun using it so we can highly recommend taking a look at it [Music] [Music] [Music]

so thank you very much for watching I hope you enjoyed this episode of Analog Insights and our review of the Nikon F4 that is so nicely blending the different eras and introducing new features while kind of retaining certain important features from the past I hope you enjoyed this video if you did

please remember to like it and maybe even share it with your friends and if you want to see more videos like this please subscribe to our channel dudes Greg and I really appreciate each and every subscriber coming our way so thanks for watching and we hope to see you soon bye

Nikon F4 Review - Blending the Eras

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