The Essentials – A Guide to the Best of Nikon’s Camera Systems

We answer emails about recommending cameras and lenses every day, so we thought it might be helpful if we published brief guides to the most popular camera brands. These guides are not meant to be comprehensive. Instead they’re an introduction to The Essentials, a selection from each brand’s camera system, the best of the best. You can’t go wrong buying any of these machines.

First up in the series is Nikon, covered by who else but our resident Nikon fanboy Josh Solomon. Enjoy.

If you’ve chosen Nikon, congratulations. You’ve chosen one of the most illustrious brands in photography, renowned worldwide for their simple, rugged designs and incredible build and image quality. You’ve also chosen a brand with a frighteningly deep camera and lens roster with lots of confusing nomenclature and esoterica. Again, congratulations, I guess.

Jumping into the complicated world of Nikon can be intimidating for newcomers owing to a staggering amount of information. But have no fear – this dedicated Nikon fanboy’s got your back. Here is the best of the best from the brand.

Best Professional Camera – F6

Nikon’s bread-and-butter has always been their professional grade F-series of cameras, a line of cameras which can rightly be considered the hardest of hardcore cameras. Every single one of these cameras are suitable for the hardcore professional, but if there is one that stands out from the rest, it’s Nikon’s current F-series model, the F6.

This choice may ruffle the feathers of the Nikon faithful (who are no doubt reprimanding me in the comments for not choosing a vintage manual focus F or F2), but if we’re talking about an out-and-out film shooter for paid work, there isn’t a better choice in the Nikon lineup. It’s the most streamlined, most advanced, and most up-to-date iteration of the F-series and provides quite literally everything a working 35mm film photographer could ever need. It’s got quick autofocus, is compatible with all modern Nikon AF lenses as well as vintage manual focus lenses, and has that legendary F-series ruggedness as well. There are more features, but to list them all would be a fool’s errand, doubly so considering we’ve written a full review on the camera here.

Sure, it doesn’t have the same historical charm or vintage look of the older F-series cameras, but if you need to grab a perfect shot in a hurry the F6 will get it for you every single time.

The Nikon FM3a.

Best Enthusiast Camera – FM3a or Nikonos V

For those of us who are merely enthusiasts and don’t need all the bells and whistles of a true professional camera, the field of Nikon film cameras opens up considerably. History buffs and purists will no doubt enjoy the older F and F2 cameras while more casual amateur shooters will equally enjoy the F3, FM-series, and FA, but if there’s a camera that rises above the rest in terms of functionality and all-out cool, it has to be the Nikon FM3a.

The FM3a combines everything great about Nikon SLR’s into one beautiful package. It’s built upon the acclaimed FM-style compact SLR chassis, but improves upon its predecessors in a few key ways. It’s the only 35mm SLR with a hybrid mechanical/electronic shutter which offers aperture-priority autoexposure as well as a full functionality at every shutter speed when the batteries die. The FM3a also retains the FM2’s absurdly quick 1/4000th of a second mechanical shutter, Nikon’s classic 60/40 center weighted metering pattern, and adds Nikon’s super bright K3 focusing screen. Even amongst purists the FM3a is a revered machine, and it would behoove any Nikon shooter to own one.

I could end the discussion there, but i’d be missing a huge part of the Nikon lineup – the underwater-ready Nikonos system. No Nikon system is complete without an underwater-ready Nikonos and for regular shooters, the Nikonos V is about as good as it gets. It’s weatherproof, waterproof, and shock-proof, and is criminally easy to shoot. Combine that with the superb W-Nikkor 35mm f/2.8 and you’ve got the world’s toughest point-and-shoot camera.

Best Beginner’s Camera – FG

Nikon never had a firm grip on the novice market (and still doesn’t), but nevertheless their consumer cameras were nothing to sneeze at. The Nikkorex and Nikkormat series represented the company’s early attempts at a consumer SLR during the 1960s and ’70s, and the compact FM series was meant to carry on and improve that line. However, it wasn’t until the introduction of the truly tiny EM that Nikon finally had a horse in the beginner photographer race.

The EM was a simple aperture-priority camera aimed at consumers who wanted a small, cheap, yet capable camera which could mount those sweet, sweet F-mount lenses. The EM succeeded, and could be considered Nikon’s first true entry into the consumer camera arena. However, it is not the EM that gets my pick as the best Nikon for novices, but its successor, the Nikon FG.

The FG took the tiny EM chassis and stuffed it with a boatload of automation in a bid to catch up with the EM’s more fully fledged contemporaries like the Canon AE-1 Program. The new FG featured fully-automatic programmed autoexposure mode and manual override in addition to an aperture-priority mode, exposure compensation, an FM2-derived LED metering display, and TTL flash metering.

The FG gets my nod for Nikon’s greatest consumer camera because it’s relatively cheap and commonplace, can do nearly anything a novice shooter (and even an advanced shooter) will ask of it, and mounts some of 35mm photography’s greatest lenses. It’s a wonderful jumping off point for any aspiring shooter to build their Nikon system upon, and for some could be the only Nikon SLR they’d ever need.

Image provided by Bellamy Hunt, Japan Camera Hunter, and published here with permission.

Best Collector’s Camera – SP 2005 w/ W-Nikkor C 3.5cm f/1.8

Of Nikon’s many collectible cameras, none are more collectible than the company’s rangefinder cameras. Before Nikon’s rise to international fame with the Nikon F SLR, the company cut their teeth making rangefinder cameras throughout the 1950’s. The last, and greatest, iteration of these rangefinders is the Nikon SP, Nikon’s most technologically advanced rangefinder and a favorite of hardcore photojournalists. 

But it is not the original SP that i’ll pick for Nikon’s most collectible camera, but rather the remake, the SP 2005. During Nikon’s wave of nostalgia that produced the mentioned Nikon FM3a, Nikon decided to revive their last two rangefinder cameras, the S3 in 2000 and the SP in 2005. This was no easy task – the original dies had been lost to time and Nikon had to create them from scratch. The years of painstaking effort paid off – the two cameras currently stand as the company’s most beautiful creations, as well as two of the rarest with only eight thousand of the S3 2000 made and the twenty-five hundred of the SP 2005 made. While the S3 2000 is a fine camera in its own right, I will give the edge to the SP 2005 for its added rarity. 

The SP 2005 and S3 2000 also come with two of Nikon’s finest lenses, the W-Nikkor C 3.5cm f/1.8 and “Millennium” Nikkor-S 50mm f/1.4, respectively. These two lenses are both recreations of ultra-rare Nikon rangefinder lens designs, improved even further with Nikon’s 21st century multicoatings.

For Nikon to have made brand new versions of long-dead cameras and lenses is an astonishing feat, and one that deserves preservation on the shelves of all dedicated camera collectors, and a place in the hands of a few responsible shooters.

Essential lenses

The Nikon lens roster is the largest in all of photography and chock full of classic lenses, but in the interest of keeping this list light and tight we’ll pick just three of the brand’s most well-loved lenses.

This first lens may strike some as an odd choice. The Nikkor-H 50mm f/2 is a rather nondescript, cheap lens in the Nikkor roster. But don’t let looks and price deceive you; the Nikkor-H 50mm f/2 is quite possibly Nikon’s finest fifty.

The humble Nikkor-H quietly but consistently outshines many of its contemporaries in flat-field performance, corner-to-corner sharpness, and wide-open sharpness, contrast, and color rendition. Its visual signature is a throwback to the early days of subtle, controlled contrast and fine detail rendering. Wide-open images from the lens show a gentle character, as details become smoothed out, contrast lowers just a tiny bit, and bokeh blossoms into something beautiful.

The second lens is possibly Nikon’s most famous lens and a favorite at CP – the Nikkor 105mm f/2.5. It brings incredible subject isolation, bokeh, and amazing sharpness that’s nearly unmatched in both vintage and modern lenses, making it a superb portrait lens as well as a great walk-around short telephoto lens. Pre-AI examples will adhere to the classic Zeiss Sonnar-derived formula while AI and AI-S versions will employ an updated Double-Gauss/Xenotar-style formula but, truth be told, every single iteration of this lens is a stunner capable of making amazing images.

The third and final lens is the wide-angle Nikkor 28mm f/2.8 AIS. Out of the many stellar wide-angles in the Nikkor lineup, this is the one to have. The AI-S version improves upon its predecessors by adding in Nikon’s Close Range Correction (CRC) system, pulling in its minimum focusing distance to an intimate 0.2m (0.7 ft). The 28mm f/2.8 AI-S also enjoys a reputation for being Nikon’s sharpest wide-angle lens, making it an easy choice to fill in the final slot of a basic Nikkor SLR lens kit.

Got any more suggestions for the budding Nikonian? Let us hear about it in the comments.

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