Absoute madness: F4 arrived

[luisarguelles]

Well, this afternoon I have received my F4 from Germany. Yes, it?s heavy, but it?s, simply put, wonderful.

I?m used to my Leica equipment and I must say it is at the same level of build quality, if not slightly better.

As we said in a previous posting (?Am I mad buying a F4??), it clearly weights more then my F100, but it is

like a glove for my hands. In the balance, it weights 1,410g. with strap, batteries, film and Nikkor 35mm f/

2 AF-D. Under the same conditios, the F100 weights 1,150g. Finally, the camera weights 1,490g when the

AF-D Nikkor 20mm f/2.8 lens is attached.

 

After reafing the manual and playing with the camera, it easy to see that its AF is not a nowadays

technology, but it still focuses a lot faster than my fingers. The viewfinder is great and, despite being a

second-hand camera no one spot of dust is visible in it. Despite coming from the auction site, the seller is

a reputable shop in Wuppertal, so the camera arrived checked and with 12 months guarantee. Not bad for

289 Euros, I think (the camera is, I would say, as 90-95% as new and has only seen amateur use). This

weekend I?m leaving for a short vacation and I?ll use it with the 20 and 35mm lens. Tri-x is already inside!.

Any suggestion for using it?

[jim_momary]

I know the feeling. Happy shooting. Bet you $2 that you won't find the cable release socket on the bottom left rear! Oops, darn it. Only thing that ever tripped me up was trying to dry fire an unloaded camera. It simply won't, if film speed is set to DX, it must be set to any 'real' ASA value. Other than that ... welcome to the club. Jim M.

[jay_miao1]

I hope I didn't misunderstand the last comment from Jim about the cable release socket ... so here's a little display towards a small clarification for it on a F4 version (MB-20), which does have the access to an external cable release mechanism (red circle and arrow).<div></div>

[User_276104]

I always manually set the ISO with my F4 because there is no way to confirm that the camera is reading the DX coding properly.

 

And as Jim said, this is the only way you can fire the camera with no film in it.

[tri-x1]

Congratulations. I wish I had kept mine even if I never shot another film frame. It is a t estimate to mechanical engineering in the latter part of the 20th century.

[ShunCheung]

Eric, you can confirm the F4's film DX code reading if you mount a flash such as the SB-24 on the camera; you can then read that from the flash's LCD.

 

Once I loaded a roll of Kodachrome 64 into the F4 and all the metering did not make sense. So I mounted my SB-24 on it, and the DX decoding turned out to be ISO 4000 (yes, four thousand). I cleaned the film cassette, etc. but it was still reading 4000. From that point on I never used auto film DX decoding on the F4 again.

[User_276104]

Shun - it's so rare that I mount a flash on any of my cameras that I forgot about that route to DX confirmation. Thanks.

[summitar]

When you look at all the top of the line Nikons, from F to F6, each one is a masterpiece. Please let us know of your experiences with the F4.

[luisarguelles]

Jim, fortunately, the camera came adjusted at 200ASA, so it was easy to play with it

without film. By the way, I already had identified the cable release socket from previous

homework :) Shun, I think manually setting the ISO is a lot more convenient way of

checking it than by means of my SB-25 flash, and hereafter I will never set the camera in

its DX position, specially having into account that a camera from my collection can

experience months without being used. Kerry, I'm just leaving with the F4 and the 35 and

20mm Nikkors for a mini-vacation this week-end. I'll post here my experiences and

results.

</p>

For now, I can only say that I have not slept well tonight :)

[walterh]

If you make it a habit to always set and check the ISO setting with all bodies chances are lower to forget this :-) Actually I even check the setting with my digital cameras when I switch them on (after I once ran into a disaster with my D70^^).

 

I also once ran into such a problem once with my F90X. Those who started out in the old days ^^ guessing the exposure will quickly find the exposure data off when the setting is way off. Unfortunately it may only be off by a margin and then it really is a problem.

[juan_parm_nides]

Luis, muchas felicidades, eeer, congratulations.

 

Saludos