The Nikon F3 is the best 35mm ever!

cooltouch · Apr 20, 2017

Theo Sulphate said:
I agree with you (and others) about this. Yet, Nikon, Canon, and Sony gave their pro models a high frame count for some reason. They have crazy ciné-like speeds. Maybe I'm wrong assuming professionals were the target customer of that feature.

Yes, I've thought about this as well. And I can only respond to it based on experience. When I see a live press conference where the press cameras are permitted, you always hear a flurry of motor drive activity whenever the speaker makes an overt movement. So these newspaper guys are after that -- movement and the possibility of an interesting expression while the movement is taking place. So a fast motor drive is good for this sort of thing. Also, in field sports such as both American and International Football, where action can be fast paced and often confusing, again, a fast motor drive can be useful for freezing interesting moments where it might be difficult to find the exact "best moment."

But motorsports seldom requires the fast pace of a motor drive, I've found. There's a fair amount of waiting and anticipation. An exception might be an accident a photographer would want to capture in detail. But other than that, I can't really think of much reason to use the rapid fire of a motor drive at all . . . Although I can think of one recent exception. I was shooting with my Sony NEX 7 and a manual focus Tamron 300/2.8 at a motorcycle race. I had positioned myself at the end of the longest straight on the course right at a tight turn. This caused all the riders to bunch up tightly. I know from previous experience in situations like this to prefocus on a specific part of the track, so that's what I did. But I wanted to catch as much of the action during this flurry as I could so, probably for only the second or third time in my life, I used a motordrive on Continuous setting. The NEX's motor drive, in this cas -- and not just any one, but the high speed one that forsakes focus -- like 10 or 11 fps. So when those bikes hit the spot I'd focused on - Bzzzzzz. It worked -- I got several keepers from that one press of the shutter release. That technique worked best at the beginning of the race, when all the riders are still tightly bunched up, I found.

Here's a shot from that race, show you what I mean:

Theo Sulphate said:
Wonderful car photos.

Thanks. I'd like to see some of yours. Got any links you'd care to share?

Alan Gales · Apr 20, 2017

Leigh B said:
Hi Alan,

Basketball is sort of cheating since the action is very predictable.
There's a long run-up (pun intentional) so you can anticipate the peak.

I never shot baseball.
I was doing photos for the school newspaper, and baseball is not a school sport due to seasons.
It would seem the batting action trigger is much shorter than for basketball.

- Leigh

It still must have been challenging running up and down court side with a big 4x5 press camera. Did you use grafmatic backs for your film?

Leigh B · Apr 20, 2017

Alan Gales said:
It still must have been challenging running up and down court side with a big 4x5 press camera. Did you use grafmatic backs for your film?

No, the editor was only interested in shots of action around our own basket, so I was at that end of the court. He wanted shots of "our guys" doing the deed.

I'm definitely not up to running up and down the sidelines, nor was I ever.

- Leigh

Theo Sulphate · Apr 20, 2017

cooltouch said:
...
Thanks. I'd like to see some of yours. Got any links you'd care to share?

None of my track photos have ever been online, even though the car clubs I belong to have web sites. I don't have a computer at home or a scanner. What I do is make 8x10's of everyone's car that I photographed running on the track and then I just give them out at the next meeting. If I get a "thank you", I'm happy.

Similarly, on club drives, I am the only one with an actual camera photographing the event. Most don't even use their camera phones.

Theo Sulphate · Apr 20, 2017

flavio81 said:
...
BLAME GIUGARO, i say.

Giugiaro.

No, Flavio84, I have owned two of the cars he's designed and I still have one.

I have much fondness for Italian car designers.

Dead Link Removed

The F3/T's have white markings for counting frames.

cooltouch · Apr 21, 2017

Theo Sulphate said:
None of my track photos have ever been online, even though the car clubs I belong to have web sites. I don't have a computer at home or a scanner. What I do is make 8x10's of everyone's car that I photographed running on the track and then I just give them out at the next meeting. If I get a "thank you", I'm happy.

Similarly, on club drives, I am the only one with an actual camera photographing the event. Most don't even use their camera phones.

When I was most active in my motorsports endeavors, I covered the races as a reporter for Cal Club, the Southern California wing of the SCCA. Cal Club had (has?) a monthly magazine called California Sports Car that covered the races and other events in the region. So I was covering races taking place at Riverside and Willow Springs on a regular basis. Each weekend, I'd be assigned two or three races to cover. So what I would do would be to take photos of the races that I wasn't covering on Sunday, but on Saturday I was busy covering most everyone during practice sessions. I was a bit more mercenary than you. I'd offer 8x10s for $10 each to the drivers and found they were an easy sell at that price. It made for a busy weekend, though, so I didn't do it much. I was mostly content to build up a good variety of stock images of amateur and some pro race cars.

Most of my film images that you see here are duplicates of slides. I have a dupe rig I've cobbled together that I use with my d****l cameras to produce the images. They are vastly superior to the scans I get from my Epson 4990 scanner, which was Epson's top-of-the-line flatbed before the introduction of the V7xx series. I have my own website and I store most of my images there. Cheap enough. Costs me $6 a month for virtually unlimited storage and, what, $15 a year for my domain name registration? I also have a Flickr "Pro" account, but I seldom link to images from there.

Chan Tran · Apr 21, 2017

Theo Sulphate said:
Giugiaro.

No, Flavio84, I have owned two of the cars he's designed and I still have one.

I have much fondness for Italian car designers.

The F3/T's have white markings for counting frames.

Would not blame him. The F3 is the only camera that its look grew on me. Others do look good to me but then it started to look bad. Case in point, I think the Nikon Df looks good but I had it for over 3 years and I started to see that it doesn't look that good although it works very well. When I bought the F3 in 83 I thought it didn't look as good as the F2AS that I had but it looked better as time goes by.

Chan Tran · Apr 21, 2017

Cholentpot said:
With the F3 you need to manually wind the film, focus and compensate if the situation calls for it. A2 goes up to eye and shoot the photo. DSLRs are just now passing up the the FPS of the later EOS cameras. I can blow through a roll of 36 in seconds. Even with an MD on the F3 it is slower to use. Using an F3 for sports pales in comparison to using a mid or top level autofocus EOS camera.

That being said I usually get more keepers from the F3 than the EOS. The lenses are generally more affordable for my Canon these days though.

And I think my F5 is much slower to use than my F3.

Chan Tran · Apr 21, 2017

flavio81 said:
I agree with Cholentpot's assessment, having owned the EOS 5 (aka "EOS A2") and the Nikon F3.

The EOS 5 has auto-focus, eye-controlled focus, fast 5 frames/sec integrated film advance, program mode (in addition to the other auto modes), easy exposure lock, and matrix metering. Ah, and exposure compensation is set with your thumb, without having to change your shooting hand position.

The combination of all this makes it a faster camera. Indeed an extremely fast camera to operate.

I sold my EOS 5 because i did not use it more. I use more my 'older' cameras, which have none of such advanced features.

The 2 thumb wheels on my F5 slows me down. I am faster with the F3

Cholentpot · Apr 21, 2017

Chan Tran said:
And I think my F5 is much slower to use than my F3.

Lock and load, put in full auto. If you can get over hating yourself for shooting in auto everything any auto camera can be faster. Person to person for shooting styles this may not be true.

cooltouch said:
When I was most active in my motorsports endeavors, I covered the races as a reporter for Cal Club, the Southern California wing of the SCCA. Cal Club had (has?) a monthly magazine called California Sports Car that covered the races and other events in the region. So I was covering races taking place at Riverside and Willow Springs on a regular basis. Each weekend, I'd be assigned two or three races to cover. So what I would do would be to take photos of the races that I wasn't covering on Sunday, but on Saturday I was busy covering most everyone during practice sessions. I was a bit more mercenary than you. I'd offer 8x10s for $10 each to the drivers and found they were an easy sell at that price. It made for a busy weekend, though, so I didn't do it much. I was mostly content to build up a good variety of stock images of amateur and some pro race cars.

Most of my film images that you see here are duplicates of slides. I have a dupe rig I've cobbled together that I use with my d****l cameras to produce the images. They are vastly superior to the scans I get from my Epson 4990 scanner, which was Epson's top-of-the-line flatbed before the introduction of the V7xx series. I have my own website and I store most of my images there. Cheap enough. Costs me $6 a month for virtually unlimited storage and, what, $15 a year for my domain name registration? I also have a Flickr "Pro" account, but I seldom link to images from there.

Hello fellow digital duper. I scan my negs with a DD rig. Blows most flats out of the water IMO.

cooltouch · Apr 21, 2017

Cholentpot said:
Hello fellow digital duper. I scan my negs with a DD rig. Blows most flats out of the water IMO.

Howdy back at ya! Got a question for you. Most of my duping experience so far has been with slides and B&W negs. Now, I find duping B&W negs to be about as difficult as developing B&W film, which is to say, "easy." But when it comes to color, I haven't had as good a luck. I find some emulsions are easier to dupe than others and some to be almost impossible to get right. For example, Fuji Superia I can invert to positive with very good results. But Ektar gives me fits. No matter what I do, I just can't seem to get the colors right. So, the question is, what is/are your procedure(s) for inverting the color negs you've duped?

flavio81 · Apr 21, 2017

Theo Sulphate said:
Giugiaro.

No, Flavio84, I have owned two of the cars he's designed and I still have one.

I have much fondness for Italian car designers..

Hi Na2S2O3,

I think the Nikon F3 is one of the best looking SLR cameras ever.
My problem is with function, not with form. I don't think function should follow form. I prefer the opposite. Thus my complaint with the white window that should illuminate the LCD as best as possible.

In supercars, form follows function, although it doesn't appear evident at first. I also love italian car designers, for example the design of the Lamborghini Countach. Or the design of the mercedes 126 coupe by Bruno Sacco (a car I own and love).

Cholentpot · Apr 21, 2017

cooltouch said:
Howdy back at ya! Got a question for you. Most of my duping experience so far has been with slides and B&W negs. Now, I find duping B&W negs to be about as difficult as developing B&W film, which is to say, "easy." But when it comes to color, I haven't had as good a luck. I find some emulsions are easier to dupe than others and some to be almost impossible to get right. For example, Fuji Superia I can invert to positive with very good results. But Ektar gives me fits. No matter what I do, I just can't seem to get the colors right. So, the question is, what is/are your procedure(s) for inverting the color negs you've duped?

I use this guys https://www.iamthejeff.com/post/32/the-best-way-to-color-correct-c-41-negative-film-scans method minus the last sharpening step. I clean dust, scratch and hairs in photoshop and afterwords I export back to Lightroom as a TIFF for white balance and touch-up levels. JPG out from lightroom.

When I first started only using LR I had loads of trouble. PS is much more powerful and Jeff's actions never gave me issues except for the over sharpening which I took out. I also tweaked it to do B&W by adding an auto B&W level. It always seems to need more contrast though, which I add in LR. Also C-41 tends to need 1" to 1.4 seconds while B&W is from 1/4-1/8 @ about f/11 with macro tubes.

Theo Sulphate · Apr 21, 2017

Chan Tran said:
... I think the Nikon Df looks good but I had it for over 3 years and I started to see that it doesn't look that good although it works very well.
...

Both black and chrome Df bodies look good to me, though the camera is large. I salute Nikon for introducing a camera with external controls (knobs, etc.) for the most commonly used functions. Also for introducing a camera that accepts pre-AI lenses. It seems that somewhere in Nikon there are kindred souls to us here.

flavio81 said:
...
My problem is with function, not with form. I don't think function should follow form. I prefer the opposite....

As an engineer, I am in total agreement with you, Flavio85. If I were to pick a favorite modern Nikon, it would be the FM3a.

flavio81 · Apr 21, 2017

Theo Sulphate said:
As an engineer, I am in total agreement with you, Flavio85. If I were to pick a favorite modern Nikon, it would be the FM3a.

Theo Sulfide,

The FM3a has no provision to mount pre-AI lenses. This constitutes a sin on my holy Nikon book.
Otherwise a fantastic machine.

Greetings,
Flavio81

CMoore · Apr 23, 2017

cooltouch said:
When I was most active in my motorsports endeavors, I covered the races as a reporter for Cal Club, the Southern California wing of the SCCA. Cal Club had (has?) a monthly magazine called California Sports Car that covered the races and other events in the region. So I was covering races taking place at Riverside and Willow Springs on a regular basis. Each weekend, I'd be assigned two or three races to cover. So what I would do would be to take photos of the races that I wasn't covering on Sunday, but on Saturday I was busy covering most everyone during practice sessions. I was a bit more mercenary than you. I'd offer 8x10s for $10 each to the drivers and found they were an easy sell at that price. It made for a busy weekend, though, so I didn't do it much. I was mostly content to build up a good variety of stock images of amateur and some pro race cars.

Most of my film images that you see here are duplicates of slides. I have a dupe rig I've cobbled together that I use with my d****l cameras to produce the images. They are vastly superior to the scans I get from my Epson 4990 scanner, which was Epson's top-of-the-line flatbed before the introduction of the V7xx series. I have my own website and I store most of my images there. Cheap enough. Costs me $6 a month for virtually unlimited storage and, what, $15 a year for my domain name registration? I also have a Flickr "Pro" account, but I seldom link to images from there.

Oh Wow.....that is Awesome.!
I wrenched on a Formula Ford...1977-1979. I went to Road Atlanta twice...first time was with a MG-B 'C' Production guy that won the State Points in CA and then the next year...long story...friend of a friend...i hitched on with Paul Newman Racing, just for The Nationals.
Anyway.......i shot quite a few Black and White negs at Sears Point and Laguna Seca...but i unfortunately lost ALL of them when we moved from San Francisco in 2001.
I was working on a Crossle 32F. The driver was leading his first Pro Series race at Laguna and crashed in (what was then) Turn #9.....and that was that. We were only 19 years old at the time, and it was way more money than He/We could afford.

Fast forward to 2017 and i do not recognize any of the Cars, Drivers, and poor Laguna Seca was crapped on in a bad way. I guess they needed the length.?
We only towed your way (Riverside) one time, but i guess that is Gone/Different also.?
good luck

cooltouch · Apr 24, 2017

Yeah, Riverside is a housing development now. Sad. She was a great old track. There's that new ultra-modern raceway in the same general area now. Fontana -- don't recall where that is. It's called the Auto Club Speedway and it's just a big tri-oval. Mostly NASCAR roundy-rounds. But fortunately, the track does have a sports car circuit. So if Cal Club has access, that's the circuit they most likely will use. There's also a smaller interior circuit, which the might also use. Here's a link to the speedway's sports car circuit:

http://www.autoclubspeedway.com/Guest-Info/Sport-Car-Map.aspx

I moved from SoCal to Texas one year after the Speedway opened, so I never had an opportunity to visit the place. During the 90s, I attended schools for most of the decade, and my photo work went into hibernation.

lxdude · Dec 14, 2022

cooltouch said:
As football coach Bum Williams said about Houston's running back, the great Earl Campbell -- "He may not be in a class by himself, but it sure don't take long to call roll."

Bum Phillips, you mean?

lxdude · Dec 14, 2022

cooltouch said:
Yeah, Riverside is a housing development now. Sad. She was a great old track. There's that new ultra-modern raceway in the same general area now. Fontana -- don't recall where that is. It's called the Auto Club Speedway and it's just a big tri-oval. Mostly NASCAR roundy-rounds. But fortunately, the track does have a sports car circuit. So if Cal Club has access, that's the circuit they most likely will use. There's also a smaller interior circuit, which the might also use. Here's a link to the speedway's sports car circuit:

http://www.autoclubspeedway.com/Guest-Info/Sport-Car-Map.aspx

I moved from SoCal to Texas one year after the Speedway opened, so I never had an opportunity to visit the place. During the 90s, I attended schools for most of the decade, and my photo work went into hibernation.

Actually, RIR first became a shopping mall (the upper half of the property closer to Hwy. 60), with additional shopping, restaurants, commercial, etc. in its vicinity. Years after that, the banked turn, some of the paddock, and the announcer's "tower" were still visible, but now are completely gone, replaced by commercial development and housing on all of the lower, southern half.
Auto Club Speedway in Fontana is about 10 miles west of San Bernardino, and about 5 miles east of the site of the old Ontario Motor Speedway, off I-10. It is no longer going to be a tri-oval superspeedway after next year- the final NASCAR Cup race there will be in February 2023. Sad- I remember when NASCAR had two races in one season there. A lot of the property will be developed; land here in inland SoCal is becoming stupid expensive these days, and a huge track property I guess just doesn't give enough return. It will be shrunk to a much smaller elongated oval, so it won't disappear completely.
Strange that SoCal has so much trouble supporting one top-notch track.

I know this is 5 years since you posted it, but hey, it's history...

gone · Dec 14, 2022

lxdude said:
I remember when NASCAR had two races in one season there.

I remember when NASCAR used production vehicles that were hopped up to the max by private individuals. Don't forget, these things were first run on the beach in Daytona Beach, Fl. Now they're all built from the ground up as spec cars, and for all intents and purposes all identical. When I lived in Daytona just a few short years ago, you could hear them roar on the track from miles away. That part is still cool, they still sound like race cars.

Many years ago the race driver Sam Posey, who raced sports type cars, casually asked how much the NASCAR cars weighed. His startle response was "They weigh HOW much???"

lxdude · Dec 14, 2022

momus said:
I remember when NASCAR used production vehicles that were hopped up to the max by private individuals. Don't forget, these things were first run on the beach in Daytona Beach, Fl. Now they're all built from the ground up as spec cars, and for all intents and purposes all identical. When I lived in Daytona just a few short years ago, you could hear them roar on the track from miles away. That part is still cool, they still sound like race cars.

Many years ago the race driver Sam Posey, who raced sports type cars, casually asked how much the NASCAR cars weighed. His startle response was "They weigh HOW much???"

Yep, they have not been STOCK cars for a long time. Though they only ever started as stock cars... Still, it's something to see old photos of Stock cars with chrome bumpers and such. I don't know when they switched to spec completely, and no longer got production models and modified them. I guess it had to happen- or there would have been Stock cars with V6s and front wheel drive...

jtk · Dec 14, 2022

Got a new black FTn for $150 as appreciation for selling so many of them in San Francisco.

That was nowhere near as good as my Canon F1s or my old Leica 2Fs, but I did happily shoot a lot of Kodachrome and Kodak 2475 with it. I liked the way it sounded.

AND I love my Pentax K70.

Marcelo Paniagua · Dec 14, 2022

Tom Stanworth said:
Never used an F3 but...... If my head speaks, the brialliance of Canon EOS cameras is hard to deny. They were leagues ahead when they came out and arguably still are in terms of performance. They lose out to Nikon in terms of perceived solidity and build. I have heard pros comment that they are stronger as the placky exterior helps them to bounce and reduce shock to the insides and so are in fact harder to break (stop working) than metal bodied cameras. I didn't want to like them, plastic, plastic,plastic, but the embodiment of SLR flexibilty and raw performance. I own them and respect them but am not fond of them. I do think that they really shifted the goalposts and pushed SLR cameras to another level. To me, Leicas are lovely things, but I cannot vote for anything so unjustifiably expensive. They must cost peanuts to make (so much retooling required over the last 50 years, so much R&D.....yeah right). I would love to own one, but would never buy one as I would feel like I had been robbed. I take a rather cynical view of how Leica does business with the M series. One minute the M6 is the ultimate reportage camera, with no uneccessary frills. Owners scoff at those who need such faddish rubbish as TTL flash....then embrace the M6TTL whilst scoffing at the idea of any auto exposure....and embrace the M7, claiming that the camera keeps getting better and better but claim that progress is now not neccessary; it has all it needs right now. Leicas are a bit like religion and society. The values of a faith should never change or be compromised to fit in with modern living. People should adhere to the values if tehy have any well, value. When progress is innevitable and is accepted, it completely reduces to cobblers the arguments previously used to deny it and the validity of the values themselves! The original values deemed intrinsic, definitive and ultimately of divine origin are now regarded as archaic, barbaric, reducing the current values to mere reflections of our culture, today. When the M4s and M6s were new, microchippery flaunted by other cameras was unneccessary. Now that the M7 has come along, it is OK....cos its a Leica, see! Now we do need TTL/ auto exposure. Before, when those other cameras had it, it wasn't needed. The point is that Leica could have produce the M7 20 years ago, but did not. I doubt it was because they could not, but more likely because they have customers wrapped around their fingers and tehy simply did not need to. They now have the MP and the M7, covering both bases, but put the daft knurled round rewind knob on the MP (like this is as efficient as that on the M6/7) whilst claiming that it is now raw, purified, distilled photojournalistic perfection...(by going backwards in the opposite direction to those improvemts made by introducing a proper rewind lever)......oh wait, its the M7 that is the perfect tool...err, or was it the MP. They must really have had to invest cash to build the MP at £2000, MORE than the M7. They are taking the P***! Nonetheless, I still want one. With 50mm lens, £1000 would be about right.
If only another manufacturer vould hit Leica head on with seriously good build, stunning lenses etc with a similarly basic level of automation. Something less automated than the G2, but better built than the Voigtlanders, without the prblems of the Hexar RF. Basically a complete rip off of the M series, without the daft film loading (silent shutter mandatory). I am convinced if it was done, Leica would be reduced to the Cartier Bresson surfing fraud that it is. I still want one, because of what it is, not the name. I would gladly buy a competitor's rip off at 1/3 price that does the same job and is built as well and lose the name. I feel that Leica now run a shrewd business, serve their own interests well, but the photographic community (a member of which made them so famous) so very badly. Like Canon and Nikon, they could have moved things forward and produce serious tools to be used (those who use them because they are perfect for the job probably do so for that reason, namely because they have no alternative choice. The rest polish them.

Damn, I missed out the politics....

Come on bite, come on!

Tom

Well it is is a business and their business modelo works.

guangong · Dec 14, 2022

Keeping the computer in my head rather than in camera, I never had the urge to move beyond Nikon F and F2. The engineering and materials are top quality. Treated with respect these cameras seem to have an unlimited lifespan. They are going to outlive all other SLRs. I use plain prism, so no concern regarding batteries or meter repairs.

pentaxuser · Dec 14, 2022

I wonder whatever happened to the OP whom we haven't seen since Feb 2012? Did he give up on APUG, give up analogue photography?

pentaxuser

The Nikon F3 is the best 35mm ever!

Attachments

Privacy & Transparency

Privacy & Transparency