[Grogospeak] New Cameras at Technique, and They Take Film!

[David Templeton]

Im actually fairly excited about the F3HPs... the High-Point viewfinder 
variant of the Nikon F3.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikon_F3

The F3 was actually the best film camera money could buy from 1980-88. 
This wasn't a camera that emo kids and soccer moms ran around with. 
After that, Nikon went all electronic on us.

-D

Eric Schmiedl wrote:
> Hey all,
> Arrived today in the Technique office was a box of six new film cameras 
> for us to use, courtesy Ke's credit card:
> 
> Three Nikon N80s, the all-singing all-dancing motor-drive bodies that 
> were constantly checked out last year;
> 
> and (for those of you that love old manual cameras) three Nikon F3HPs -- 
> the highest-end manual camera that Nikon ever made. Described as the 
> "Mercedes Benz S-Class of manual cameras," these guys were so well 
> designed that some US Army photographers have been using the same bodies 
> continuously since 1983.
> 
> Also, in case the medium-format lovers among you are looking for a 
> little less depth of field-- we got an 80mm f/1.9 lens for the Mamiya 
> bodies.
> 
> For those of you that have never shot medium format, 80mm has the same 
> field of view as a 50mm lens on a film camera or a ~35mm lens on D200. 
> It still has the shallow depth of field of an 80mm lens, though -- and 
> f/1.9 is more than a full stop wider aperture than the f/2.8 lenses we 
> currently have. In other words, it's a huge chunk of glass!
> 
> But don't run to check them out just yet... Dave still has to engrave 
> everything. Hopefully they'll be available in the next few days.
> 
> Enjoy,
> Eric