Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/04/22
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]> Would anyone who will off-line admit to using both a Nikon F100 and F3, > or who has done so recently enough to have a good memory of the foibles > and strengths of the F3, please contact me off-line. > > Thanks > > B. D. I own and use, very often by the way, either the F3, with 15,20,24,28,35,50,85 and 180mm lenses and F5, similar to F100, mainly with 3 zooms 17-35, 28-70 and 80-200 AFS zooms, plus teleconverter. Nikon is a reliable SLR system with some very interesting lenses with very good ratio quality/price. F3 is by actual standards a light body very tought with a consistent center weighting metering system and a some beautifull lenses. They are not exactily searching the absolute perfection as Leica and Carl Zeiss do, but have a long history of producing some nice lenses which give a output accordingly with their cost. In some tests I have done at f:8 15mm f:3,5 Nikon proved to be as better as Hologon from Zeiss. 20 mm f:2,8 from Nikon is not as good as Carl Zeiss 21mm but quite near. Same can be said from 28mm, 35mm and 50mm. Main difference is that full opened Nikon lenses are worse than equivalent Leica/Carl Zeiss lenses. Generally speaking Nikon gear has very good ratio efficiency/cost. Autofocus camera have not so well finished lenses as manual focus but quality is certainly present. F3 is a particularly nice camera that admit every lens produced by Nikon but perhaps the more interested camera is Nikon F4 that preserve a beautifull matrix metering with every lens produced by Nikon with AIS interface. But to be on topic the only lenses that have improved my Summicrons have been the G Carl Zeiss 45mm f:2 and specially my Hasselblad 45mm f:4 in 24x36 never in 24x65 and I believe that it is due besides to his quality to his huge coverage. Kind regards Felix