Camera Talk

OK - will then keep an eye for an unmetered plain prism. Thanks Benny!

It is indeed a thing of rare beauty. This is my most prized camera. Originally fitted with the Photomic head, thanks to a very dear friend it now sports a plain prism as it was meant to be. I bought my first Nikon F, a black one with plain prism and 50mm f2 Nikkor-H in 1962. For twenty years it traveled the world with me and did more than a camera should be expected to do. I foolishly traded it for a FE2 because the higher flash sync speed of 1/250th was an advantage for shooting weddings. This is a 1971 vintage camera and the finder prism is actually a type 3, which is an earlier vintage. Info on the various plain prism types can be found here:
http://www.destoutz.ch/typ_eyelevel-finders.html#type4g



Here is the same camera with the Photomic prism.

Re: F2 photomic head on an F body without name plate - it will fit, I just tried with a dead F2 photomic head I have on an F body that I bought that had the nameplate missing. But I couldn't get the "claw" linkage at the back of the F's finder opening to lock the head on. May just be a slight bit different. And even if it would lock, the front of the F2 photomic finder would be loose since it has two catches that normally lock around two pins on the front of the F2. These don't correspond to anything on the front of an F body, not even the two screws that hold the F's name plate on - they're in a different place. The F's own photomic finders, at least the later version, have two catches to lock around the edges of the front name plate to help hold it in place. Kind of a shame it won't fit. The F with an F2 photomic finder looks sleeker than an F with the clunky meter head on it.

I'd also never tried it until now, but an unmetered, plain F prism will fit on and lock on an F2 body.

After I sold my Pentax MX, I knew it was time to get a "serious" camera, and for me that meant a Nikon. It was 1979, and smaller cameras were all the rage.

Not being able to decide which to get, I bought a Nikon FE and a month later added an F2A. Both have been reliable, sturdy cameras that have required only new batteries and new foam seals. I shot the heck out of both cameras in the 1980s. Not as much these days, as I began to branch out into a few other brands, styles and makes.

The F and F2 are incredible cameras and can stand up to anything. It's easy to understand why war photographers used them.