Nikon F 80

Like most people who have bought this camera in the last few years I bought this second hand on eBay for about £80 with a zoom lens, which I soon swapped for a 50mm standard lens.

For someone like me who had only used digital cameras and manual film SLR cameras before, using this it came as a surprise to me how advanced this camera is, essentially it's digital in every way apart from the fact it has a film transport mechanism. It has a magnitude of setting mainly controlling exposure and focus setting such as being able to choose whether or not the camera looks for close or far away objects when focusing, and of course the auto focus can be switched of at the flick of a switch. Essentially this camera is designed in such away, that as long as you get the settings right and you know what you are doing its very unlikely that the camera will fail to give you the image you need, and if you really know what you are doing the camera should definitely always give you results. Also the viewfinder seems to give me a much clearer view of what the photo will look like than the view finder in my manual models and remember with SLR's what you see is what you get.

I only wonder how good a film SLR Nikon could make these days.

The only time I messed up is when I was using a flash gun for fill-in on portraits, however I think this was my bad because I just put the third party flash gun on the camera and started shooting portraits with no diffuser thinking the camera would just get it right, but of course without using flash exposure compensation or slow sync the camera has tried to use the flash to provide as much of the light as possible over coming the natural light rather than just filling in. But a few dodgy looking flash shots as the only shots that didn’t come out in 3 years can’t be bad.

This camera is also really well made I once dropped it down some concrete steps and I thought I had totaled it but of course it survived intact with some scratches, a UV filter saved the lens.

This camera would be a great purchase for film lovers out there and also great for anyone who has a darkroom as a hobby. It is also a good buy for Nikon Digital SLR owner who has never tried film before or want to benefit from a larger view finder, try cross Processing ECT. And of course an ideal camera for students. Unfortunately it will not meter with manual focus Nikon lenses, I have not Idea why but that does stop me from being able to use a lot of older cheaper glass, so if you want to use older glass get a light meter or an F90x.