Previous Generations

I spent the morning helping a good friend's father go through his extensive collection of Nikon equipment with a view to selling it.  Sadly he has contracted Parkinson's disease and the cameras and lenses are sitting unused as he simply cannot handle them anymore.

It was fascinating to see what he had, including these 3 bodies, each in their turn were state of the art in times past.  I particularly liked handling the Nikon F5, the flagship body at the end of the film era for cameras.  I must admit to almost being defeated in opening the back to extract a roll of film still in the camera.  There were various interlocks and only when using them in combination was it possible to open it.  Even the on-off switch had a small button that needed to be pressed to allow the lever to be moved across.

Unfortunately, even the most recent, the Nikon D3x doesn't demand high values second hand.  I remember when it came out that it took the pixel race on a pace, with its 24 megapixel full frame sensor!  Until that time Nikon were only at the heady heights of 12 megapixels with their Nikon D3.  How times have changed.  Funnily enough the D3x still boasts the highest megapixel count for a professional Nikon camera body (with an integrated grip).