Nikon F Black Body Nippon Kogaku

I am looking to buy a nice Nikon F Black with PentaPrism (Nippon Kogaku

Tokyo ). If I am lucky to find one- what sort of price would I be paying? I

know it depends on the condition- say if it was 7 out of 10 rating. 10 being a

mint. Any ideas, please. Thank you.

Very hard to say. There's the age and condition of the body to weigh, along with the high collectibility of clean plain prisms.The problem with pretty black Fs is their growing attraction to collectors who can drive up prices terribly for the rest of us. Check KEH and the big auction site for rough guides.

I would think you would be paying $400 to $500 for the camera and that finder,which is pretty rare in black.

The plain prisms have been priced above what the body is worth for over 2 decades. About 1982 one could buy a used Nikon body in black from KEH for about 59 bucks, a chrome one was 49. The prisms were 50 to 100 then for black ones. Unused black new old stock F meterless prisms in teh box have fetched 650 bucks on Ebay, collectors, need to have this stuff bad. :) New F old stock prisms were cheap in the mid 1970's, 30 to 60 bucks in Shutterbug adverts.<BR><BR>You might get a better deal on a black prism by buying a complete camera, by a newbie Ebay seller who has it listed abit odd. <BR><BR>You really should buy these items when folks are dumping them, when they are out of style, when they are just considered obsolete. <BR><BR>Many of us who still use Nikon F's have seen prices vary all over the place. I bought one used in 1962, with a used 5.8cm F1.4 Nikkor. <BR><BR>There are also some fake or converted to black prisms too. Plus some of us did this too before folks collected cameras. Before say 1970 camera collecting was nil. Folks were dumping their old "obsolete" Leica M's and paying to buy a Petri.

Camera collecting in the 1960's was as popular today as collecting spam, aol discs, collecting 9600 bps modems, collecting 486 computers. The rise of the baby boomers with money to burn, the several camera collecting books written in the early 1970's, and Ed Romney's camera articles in the 1970's shutterbug rag/newspaper sparked/increased collecting alot.

Like this?<div></div>

Nice one Ace. Yours shows more brass but mine has a bigger dent in the prism. Nothing

is as attractive as an ugly F.

The July '06 issue of Shutterbug has an article on collection old F's.

A few months back, I got myself a plain chrome prism for $35. Nothing is impossible!

This is just another war story, and might not have anything to offer in way of a good answer, but the black pointy-prism F in the photo cost me 100 Dollars about ten years ago. As soon as I got home with it, I put a couple of rolls of slide film in and shot at every shutterspeed, changing he aperture with each frame... 1/1000th @ f/4.0, 1/500th @ f5.6, etc... through the entire range. I then repeated the same test in doors to check the low speeds. When I laid the slides on a light table, every frame matched the next, even to the speeds at the end of the line.

 

In short, this old camera that has many, many more years on it than people would expect today with the latest "wonder-plastic" models was ready to use without the need for a tune up. Now ten years later, it still performs perfectly, and still has not needed any servicing.

 

FWIW, I had 4 chrome Fs with Photomic meters when I got this black one. The chrome models sat unused and were eventually sold. There is something about that black F and pointy prism that makes it special.

 

FWIW 2, I would expect that the price will be high based on the prism. These are hard to find and can command a high price. If you just want to use this camera, buy ugly. Collectors hate ugly, but the operation can be just as good as a pristine example.<div></div>

I found one just last week that was nearly mint until I turned it around and someone engraved their initials on the back... Next!<g>