REVIEW : Nikon F4s : Daniel Nielsen Photography

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Last Updated: February 5, 2004

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Nikon F4s

By Daniel Nielsen

   The F4s is a do-almost-anything body. It was Nikon's first "professional" autofocus body, and was introduced back in 1989, shortly after the plastic-bodied N8008.
   Many recent reviews of the F4 complain that its autofocus speed is slow. Compared to the Nikon F5 and the newest Canon EOS bodies, I'm sure that's true. But when it came out in 1989, it had the fastest autofocus available anywhere. It's plainly unfair to compare a 12-year-old design to today's designs. If you look at published comments from 10 years ago, you'll find nothing but praise for the F4's autofocus capability.
   I don't own an autofocus lens. I borrowed a couple of autofocus lenses just to mess around, and the autofocus system did the job faster than I could manually. To me, that's sufficient.
   But I didn't buy an F4 for autofocus - I bought it for its many other features:
  • Matrix metering
  • Spot metering
  • Through-the-lens flash metering
  • Fast motor drive
  • Fast shutter speeds
  A little history might help explain my perspective on the F4. I've used the Nikon system for more than 20 years as a small-town newspaper photographer. As a photojournalist, I needed reliability and ease of operation. I used a Nikkormat FT2, Nikkormat FTN, Nikon FTN, Nikkormat ELW and Nikon FM. Each of those bodies did the job. I have to admit I'm a bit slow to adopt new technology when I don't see a problem with the old. When I bought the Nikkormat ELW, already well used, in 1986, I thought I'd use the aperture-priority autoexposure all the time. In reality, I guess I just didn't trust it, and ended up setting the camera on manual anyway. I later bought an AW-1 autowinder for it, but found I rarely used it.
  Nowadays, I'm no longer a working photojournalist - I'm a professional Web geek. But I still love photography, and still have great hopes of creating great pictures. And I decided it was time to replace my 1960s-era Nikon FTN with a newer, more capable body.
   Here's what I wanted in my next body:
   Auto exposure. This probably seems like a necessity rather than an option to most of today's photographers, but I started shooting at a time when autoexposure was not available in professional cameras. So I learned how to meter, compensate and pre-set exposure. And it can be hard to stop using techniques that work and are ingrained deeply. But I'm finally beginning to realize that if technology can handle exposure correctly in most situations, why not let it? I've been mighty impressed with the results from an Olympus Stylus I bought for my wife, and I decided it's time to give it a real chance.
   Spot metering. I grew up with center-weighted metering, and have a good handle on when it doesn't work correctly and needs to be compensated for. But there's no way center-weighted metering can zero in on specific areas of a scene such as you need to do to use the zone system, even a simplified version of it. For that, you need a spot meter.
   Matrix metering. As I get older, I find that I wouldn't mind the option of setting exposure on "auto" and then concentrating on composition. Matrix metering is a big step in that direction, since it can automatically compensate for many situations that center-weighted metering would stumble over.
   I was seriously thinking of an N6006.
   Here's the scoop:
   Viewfinder: I love getting rid of the irritating split-prism that most older bodies had. The standard screen in the F4 is the "K" screen, the one that my Nikon FTN had. It's a flat matte (it actually is a fresnel lens, but it looks like a ground glass). I love the "high eyepoint" feature of the F4, which means that I can see the entire frame even though I wear glasses. This is accomplished, at least partly, by reducing the size of the image. That's bad because it makes it harder to focus. But the F4's autofocus system interacts with my manual-focus Nikkors and displays a four-light rangefinder in the viewfinder, and that's good. A little square means it's in focus, while a triangle on either side of the square indicates it's out of focus. There's also an "X" that means it's too dark or there's not enough contrast for the system to focus. Overall, the F4's viewfinder is okay, but not a terrific improvement over my FM or FTN. It offers a boatload of information readouts, which I'm not used to and still have some trouble using quickly. As mentioned above, the actual image is smaller than in an FTN or FM, but it is nice to be able to see the entire frame while wearing glasses. Yeah, the F4 finder has a diopter adjustment, but my eyes are so bad it doesn't even come close to the adjustment I require.