The Bottom Line: The F5 is the patriarch of the Nikon Imaging family that includes the F100, the D1/D1X/D1H, and a collection of the world's highest quality lenses.
Howard_Creech's Full Review: Nikon F5 35mm Film Camera
The Nikon F5 is the camera that Nikon's engineers created to be the cornerstone of the company's twenty-first century product line. A product line that hopes to blend pro models, amateur models, and digital cameras into a seamless family of imaging products that will completely cover the needs of Nikon's traditional customers and the widest possible base of new customers. The F5 was designed as the Flagship of the most ambitious camera system ever built. This new system combines state of the art 35mm technology with state of the art digital technology, and yet doesn't lose track of Nikon's traditional strengths.
Nikon envisages the F5 as the workhorse imaging tool in a camera bag that also includes an F100 as a backup body, a Nikon D1X or D100 digital camera, and a bag full of goodies both traditional and cutting edge new. The photographer with these tools in his/her bag would be prepared to shoot pretty much anything, anywhere, anytime...with the venerable Nikon F mount (and an incredible selection of lenses) as the icing on the cake.
Nuts & Bolts
The F5 is Nikon's second auto focus "pro" camera...it incorporates most of the solid features of the F4S, and a host of new features. These include the latest version of Nikon's matrix metering, now called 3D color matrix metering. The 3D matrix metering operates through a 1005 pixel CCD that reads the light falling on the scene. Each of the 1005 pixels also has either a red, green or blue filter in place. This allows the meter to measure not only the overall brightness and contrast of the scene, but also the colors. The data on brightness, contrast, focus distance, and color is analyzed (compared to the 30,000 exposures stored in the CPU memory) to provide "dead on" meter readings.
The reason this is so important is that "in camera" meters from the earliest days to the present measured only reflectance and compared the scene to an 18 per cent gray scale. This type meters, no matter how sophisticated, could be easily "fooled" by very bright scenes (snow being one of the best examples) very dark scenes, or scenes where one color was preponderant. The 3D color matrix metering system is not "fooled" by situations of this sort, allowing the photographer to concentrate on composition and capturing the image, rather than worrying about how to compensate for scene variances.
Spot metering with the F5 is taken to a new level of sophistication, The five auto focus sensors, stand in as four mm spot focus points, just select the sensor that want to use for "spot" metering, and concentrate on composition without having to center the "subject" in the viewfinder. Centerweighted average metering is also the most sophisticated ever, the user can choose (using custom setting fourteen) between four different sized center spots, either 8mm, 12mm, 15mm, or 20mm. The factory setting uses the 12mm circle for 75 per center weighted metering.
The F5 is the only pro level auto focus camera with finder options (change finders, change focusing screens) a 100 per cent viewfinder, 8 FPS film advance (plus four second rewind....36exp), a direct link between camera and computer (with optional hardware), multi function backs (also optional) the most advanced flash program in the camera industry (with the SB27 or SB28 Nikon speedlights), the most advanced (Nikon calls it "wide cross array AF") and fastest auto focus available, and Nikon's patented SMS (shutter monitor system)--- every time the shutter fires the SMS checks shutter accuracy and compensates automatically for any deviation, insuring consistently accurate exposures.
(almost) All manual focus Nikon "F" mount lenses will function on the F5, but with older manual focus lenses you will lose many of the wonderful metering and distance measurement options available with Nikkor AF lenses.
IN THE FIELD/OPERATION & HANDLING
My first experience with the F5 came in the late summer of 1999 when I participated in a two day workshop with Bill Luster. Bill is the photo editor for the Courier-Journal newspaper, he was a staff photographer with the CJ when they won the Pulitzer Prize for news photography for their coverage of the 1974 Louisville Tornado. After out initial workshop get-together I drove out to Bardstown (about 30 miles from Louisville) and wandered around at the Festival shooting “people” and “street” images. I took my trusty Nikon F4S to the workshop’s first field session where I bumped into Gary, one of the workshop participants (another early bird) and we both shot a very young girl (seven or eight years old) in a crinoline dress and gingham bonnet who was dancing all by herself to one of the bluegrass bands.
My new friend, Gary, was shooting with a Nikon F5 and after a few minutes I asked him if he liked the camera. He insisted that we trade cameras for one roll of film (he wanted to try my Nikkor 35/f1.4 lens) so we switched (the F5 had a 28/f2.0 Nikkor mounted). Gary gave me a quick run through on how everything on the F5 worked and I loaded a roll of Ektachrome Elite 200. We walked over to watch a barrel making demonstration (Bourbon is aged for at least two years in new white oak barrels). Whiskey barrels are still made in pretty much the same way they were made a hundred years ago. We both walked around the highly skilled cooper (barrel makers are called coopers) as he put a huge barrel together from a pile of individual staves, a bottom, and two iron hoops. He used a small sledge hammer and a chisel like tool to seat the iron hoops. I mounted my Nikon SB24 speedlite on the F5 and moved in close to focus on just his hands and tools. The F5’s color 3D matrix metering allowed me to shoot several perfect exposures with the barrel in perfect focus but the coopers skilled hands blurred as he pounded the iron hoops into place. I only needed about five minutes to shoot the entire 36 exposure roll of slides.
The following day all the workshop participants met at 8:00 am on East Main Street in downtown Louisville. Bill wanted us to shoot the four blocks between Fourth Street and Ninth Street, along both Market and Main Streets. The area was Louisville’s commercial heart a hundred years ago but now it is a mixed bag of old cast iron building fronts, some restored and painted in bright primary colors, and some rusty and showing the effects of over one hundred years of weather and neglect.
The architecture ranges from the old Bank of Louisville building (designed by Gideon Shryrock in 1837) to late Victorian Whiskey warehouses built in the last decade of the 19th century. Gary offered to trade cameras again if I would loan him the Nikkor 35/f1.4 (he had a roll of T-max 100 Black & White film that he wanted to shoot at the fast maximum aperture of the 35/f1.4, a lens specially designed for photo-journalists. I loaded a roll of Kodak Ektachrome 64 Professional in the F5 and mounted a favorite old 55/f2.8 Micro Nikkor. I wanted to find one of the old un-restored warehouses and use the incredible resolution and flat field of the Micro Nikkor to document texture of the cast iron building fronts.
Gary wandered off to shoot some environmental portraits of a couple of Market Street shop-keepers (who often sit out in front of their shops in nice weather). I found my warehouse and shot the entry-way of the old warehouse with the F5 and 55/f3.5 Micro Nikkor mounted on a heavy duty Slik Master Classic tripod. The rusted cast iron front had traces of both white and pastel green paint. The old cast iron front of the building beautifully side lit by the early morning sun while the building’s dark weathered double oak doors (the entryway is recessed) remained in shadow, adding a wonderful counter texture to the brightly lit cast iron. We finished up about 10:00 am and Bill sent us to get our film processed and have lunch.
We met up again late the following morning (a Sunday) at a local camera store to review our images. Bill allowed us to submit ten images each, which he would then critique. Bill started his critique by showing the pictures that Gary and I had shot in Bardstown. Gary had shot the coooper’s face and upper body (intense concentration and a forehead beaded with sweat) in environmental portrait style with Kodak T-Max 400. I had shot his blurred hands pounding the barrels iron hoops into place with slow speed Kodak Ektachrome 64 professional slide film and fill flash. Bill really liked the way the two of us had shown the cooper at work on his craft in radically different ways.
Technical Specifications
Viewfinder: Non-fixed (removable) TTL pentaprism
Metering: 10 segment 3D Matrix, Centerweighted (Variable), & Spot
Shutter Speeds: 30 seconds to 1/8000th of a second
Film Advance: 8 FPS
Power: 8 "AA" cells
Exposure Modes: Program (Shiftable), Aperture & Shutter Priority AE, and Metered Manual
Optional
MF28 "Multi-Control" Back (data imprinting, intervalometer, auto-bracketing, long exposures, & freeze focus feature) Nikon "Photo-Manager" (PC or MAC computer link)
CONCLUSION
The F5 with a short zoom and either the SB27 or SB28 makes for a VERY substantial package, however the weight balances well, the ergonomics are almost perfect, controls are logical and well thought out. The camera feels good in the hands and the act of using the camera becomes intuitive. The F5 is a worthy successor to the "F", F2, F3, and F4. Combined with a bagful of digital and traditional goodies the F5 may be the ultimate 35mm imaging tool. If you want to take one home with you, be prepared to dig deep, the best always costs. Is the F5 worth the high tarriff? In a word, YES.
If you enjoyed reading this 35mm SLR review, you may find my other 35mm SLR reviews informative:
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