Nikon F4

by Philip Greenspun; created 1995

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After losing my 8008 and 6006, a friend of mine was kind enough to lend me his F4 (he never uses it, preferring the N90). Here is what I found after a few days in the woods:

• The camera is an ergonomic nightmare compared to the 8008/6006. Instead of the shutter speed wheel protruding a bit for easy thumb access, it is a small, hard to grasp dial. Turning the camera on, a simple slide switch on the 8008/6006, requires holding one little button and rotating a collar around the shutter release. Instead of shutter speed and aperture being displayed together at the bottom of the finder, your eye has to jump between the top of the finder and the bottom to see both. Operation is clumsy overall.

  [Now that I've switched to Canon EOS bodies with their top and back controls wheels, the F4's ergonomics seem even more primitive.]

• One is constantly inadvertently knocking the metering mode selector on top of the pentaprism, moving the camera out of matrix metering into spot metering mode, for example. (Newer F4's have a redesigned mode selector switch that isn't so easy to knock.)
• It is much nicer to have shutter speeds to 30 seconds (8008/6006) instead of just 8 (F4).
• A self-timer that is fixed at 10 seconds (F4) is a lot less useful as a substitute cable release than one that can be adjusted to 2 seconds (8008/6006).
• An F4 and a 50/1.8 is as heavy as a brick. Combine the F4 body with an 80-200/2.8 lens and you'll be dead before you've finished one roll of fashion photography, unless you are as big as Arnold. Plenty of medium format SLR bodies are lighter than the F4. Coming as I do from a large- and medium-format background, I'd always thought the whole point of 35mm was take anywhere, lightweight convenience. The F4 is not really in the 35mm spirit as far as I can tell.
• It is impossible to check and see if the camera is DX'ing film properly, an operation that takes one second with the 8008/6006.
• The camera is much more finicky about film loading than the 8008/6006.
• The viewfinder is not as well organized as with the 8008, requiring more eye movements (top for aperture, bottom for shutter speed). However, having 100% coverage and the diopter adjustment is really nice (Point 1 for the F4).

Conclusion: if you don't have a very specialized requirement, Nikon's lower line cameras, e.g., N90, 8008, are much better user machines.