The Best Film Camera Bargain

The Online Photographer 

by Michael Johnston

One thing I learned from the "Film vs. Digital (Not What You Think!)" post is that a small but significant number of people, after using digital for years, have gone back to shooting film.
I didn't know that was a thing. Sure, for years it's been rumored that it's cool for young hipster Millennials to shoot with old film cameras. But I wasn't aware that people of middle age or more were returning to shooting film, sometimes after two decades or so of shooting mainly or exclusively digital. But we heard from a number of you in the comments to that post, which means there are more out there who are doing the same.
So I thought I'd recommend a bargain camera.
'Party like it's 1999'
The best 35mm film camera bargain in the known Universe today is "The Last Great 20th-Century Nikon," the F100. I'm not sure what actually was Nikon's last camera of the 20th century, but the F100 must be the last great one, so that's what I'm gonna call it. It came out in 1999.
You can buy a nice F100 for anywhere from $199 (eBay) to $339 (in Ex+ condition from KEH Camera*).
The F100 is a bargain because of an accident of history. Or of timing, really. The last widely-used pro-level Nikon F camera, the F5, had come out in 1996. The F100, a fresh makeover updating the aging but very popular N90s, was Nikon's "AdAm" (advanced amateur) variant, containing a considerable amount of "trickle-down" technology from the F5.
EOS was only ten years old in 1999, and Nikon was either at or not very far from the peak of its modern reputation—certainly it hadn't been long since Nikon dominated the professional market, and at the time it still ranked first in the minds of many devoted enthusiasts. However you parse it, Nikon's reputation and prestige were near their peak. And for most people, digital was still hull-down on the horizon in 1999—the best digital cameras in the late '90s were breathtakingly expensive and being purchased mainly by newsrooms, sports magazines, and rich dabblers, while the amateur digital cameras of the day were more or less toys, heady fun to use but providing only heavily compromised image quality.
Plus, it was briefly a "thing" at that juncture in time—the late '90s—for seasoned and experienced photographers, especially middle-aged and older ones, to declare their fealty to "real" film photography and denigrate digital. The paradigm shift was still a few years in the future. And the F100, as the "F5 lite" (really, that's what people called it), offered significant technical advances over many cameras that were only a few years older.
As a result, the F100 sold like ice-cold Cokes on a sweltering hot day. It hit the bullseye in the target market. They were hugely popular. It seemed like everybody and his brother wanted one. Nikon sold boatloads of 'em.
...But only for a while. Only a year later, the three-megapixel Canon D30 came out, and Michael Reichmann's article declaring that it equaled film in image quality went viral in a big way, establishing his site The Luminous-Landscape. The D30 was tantalizingly cheaper but still prohibitive at $3,000. Then in 2003 the radically affordable Digital Rebel came along, and the bell began to toll. The same photographers who had proudly purchased F100's as their "last" cameras—enticed by the fast pace of digital progress, the proliferation of digital models on offer, and the ever more accessible prices of digital cameras—started making the migration to digital. First in a trickle, then in a torrent.
By 2005, hardly anyone was buying film cameras any more. As it happened, a great many people switched to digital shortly after buying their F100, making for a huge supply of F100's out there that had very low miles. Quickly, the used market was awash with F100s in great condition, so the price went down, down, and down some more.
And there the price has stayed.
'It was 20 years ago today...'
Objectively, there are more desirable Nikons today for film shooters. In 2001, Nikon made a small-volume revival of its famous FM/FE lines of compact film cameras, a new version called the FM3a (here's a picture). In 2004, the last Nikon F film camera, the F6, was introduced. Both the FM3a and the F6 are marginally better choices for someone wanting a nice 35mm film Nikon today; the former for its superior retro chic, the latter for pure tech-and-feature horsepower. The problem is that neither of those cameras ever sold in high numbers—the historical moment for each had already passed by the time they came along. As a result, the FM3a and the F6, used, now go for approximately two times and four times, respectively, what you'll spend for an F100. I'd pick an FM3a myself. But (unless you just prefer its manual-metal-mechanical gestalt) the FM3a is not twice as good a camera as the F100, and the F6 (which you can still buy new, believe it or not) is better but not four times better.
The F100 has more advantages 20 years later than just a low price. First of all, there are so many of them out there that you can be picky—you should be able to easily find one that's not only cheap 'n' decent but in truly pretty condition. It's ergonomic and not huge; it has AF and Matrix metering with AF-Nikkor lenses; it uses commonly available AA batteries, so no hunting for scarce or outlawed button batteries as with some more antique SLRs; it has built-in diopter correction, so ditto on the search for separate, screw-on diopters, a similar headache with certain old cameras for people who need diopters; I believe Nikon ARS (Authorized Repair Stations) still work on them, as do many independent repair shops; and there's a large community of film Nikon people and a large number of F100 shooters within that community, so you can find camaraderie as well as people on forums who can answer any questions you might have. And you can get Thom Hogan's Complete Guide to the Nikon F100. Finally, it's still new enough that you aren't likely to encounter problems created purely by age. The F100 was discontinued, along with most other Nikon film cameras, in the late 2000s**, not all that long ago.
'Sweetheart of the Rodeo'
Nikon put a huge amount of R&D into the F100, as it was right in the sweet spot for high-volume, high-profit sales to the enthusiast market that was the company's bread and butter. And it was an expensive camera when it came out. I reviewed one in 1999 or early 2000, and my memory is that the retail price at the time was about $1,400, which was a pretty decent whack 20 years ago. Yet it was a fair bargain at that price...as least in terms of the market conditions that existed at the end of the 20th century.
I'd be pretty relaxed today about tech specs, though. Shooting film is retro now, and should be enjoyed as such. You can use the F100 with manual-focus AIS lenses...some of which are still available new! Brand new, you can get the legendary AIS Micro-Nikkor 55mm ƒ/2.8, the same lens John Loengard of LIFE magazine used for his brilliant work. That would be fun. It would pair perfectly with the AIS Nikkor 28mm ƒ/2.8, another standout. And of course the short tele to get with those would be the famous AIS Nikkor 105mm ƒ/2.5, one of Nikon's most iconic and longest-lived lenses, which had a run from 1959 all the way through to the '90s. Here's an information page about that paragon.
The camera only offers aperture-priority exposure and center-weighted metering with manual-focus AIS Nikkors, but that's okay, because focusing it yourself enhances the retro experience. On the modern functionality side of the equation (you still want to take good pictures, after all), the camera offers focus confirmation in the viewfinder with manual-focus lenses, and actually has little arrows telling you which way to turn the focusing ring.
Me, though? If I had an F100 I'd take some of the savings from the body and buy an AF-Nikkor 35mm ƒ/2D, which is also still available new. The lens is a sweetie, and with the F100 has both autofocus and Matrix metering. Beware of used models of this lens, though, at least those without the "D" suffix at the end of the name—many early samples of this lens were plagued with lubricant getting on the aperture blades, a problem that Nikon service had trouble fixing. That lens's period of greatest popularity overlapped with my tenure as the Editor of Photo Techniques, and I fielded an earful of complaints about it. The "D" version fixed the problem.