Now that was a sexy camera!
Tri-X Lightroom Preset
Since I talked about film in my last post, I might as well talk about my fantasy camera in this post! That camera was the Nikon F3. It was the Cadillac of cameras back in the day. I worked in the camera department of a store similar to Best Buy. The store, Jewel Mart, had a camera department and I was fortunate enough to work in it. At the time, I was shooting a Minolta XD-11, which took me a long time to save for. At that time, I was making only $3.10/hour and working about 15 hours/week. The XD-11 cost nearly $300 if memory serves me correctly.
One day, we got a new camera in, the Nikon F3. This tank sold for about $750 at the time. According to an online calculator that I found, that puts the value of the camera at about $1,960 in 2009 dollars! Well, this girl was certainly out of my league. A guy making about $45/week just cannot afford a woman like this! But, each time that I got to work, I took her out of the case and fantasied about going out on an assignment, or just out to the parking lot with a pocket full film and a lot of time on my hands!
Ah, what good days those were! 
Every once in a while I’m tempted. It’s amazing what you can get now if you are willing to shoot film. You can get Nikon’s flagship film camera, the F5 for about $200! What a steal!
If you were around in the film era, did you have any fantasy camera?
Nikon’s flagship film camera is actually the F6, which is essentially a film version of a D200.
@Rekesh: Thanks. I’m behind the times in film cameras.
Yeah, get get with the program, dude!
Oops… I hosed my smiley… that was supposed to be silly. :-/
(It’s Friday and I’m stuck in an office digging through a pile of bad code. I need some silliness.)
Yup, I would loved to have a rangefinder, a Leica or a Leitz comes to my mind… I had a Nikon F2 during the eighties and nineties, and I loved it in many ways. It was solid as a tank, too. And heavy… I sleek, high quality rangefinder, on the other hand, is light and equally solid. And the viewfinder is bright and big, perfect for my older and older eyes that has a pair of glasses in front of them…
That picture, btw, is really, really good! Looks almost as here, in wintertime. Solarized?
Paul, as you might recall, I had a Pentax MX but my dream was the Nikon F2. I later got one, and the FE, but alas sold them both. For me the dream is fulfilled in my D300. Oh if I could travel back in time and show my 16 year old self the D300!!
By the way I remember you working at Jewel Mart and your Minolta. I used to love to stop by and we’d take the cameras out of the glass case and talk photo for probably too long.
Great times my friend, great times.
@Rob: Yes, I remember those times fondly! I never did get that F3, but I must say that I am quite happy with my Nikon equipment. I never did own a Nikon until I started shooting digital. Oddly enough, I jumped right to the top with a D2x, then took a step ‘back’ and got the D300, which was better technology for a much smaller price.
My dream camera at the time was a Canon F1. But really, what I yearned for even more than a particular camera were lenses. I never had the money to get the, say, f/2.0 version of a lens, I always settled for the slower version (which usually was not quite as good as the faster version of the lens. So, since I shot a number of actor’s head shots, I’d shoot with the f/1.8 version of the 85mm portrait lens instead of the f/1.2 version. I didn’t shoot Nikon because they were more expensive than Canons. I’ve always wanted to shoot a Nikon just to see what the deal is. Even today, sine I still shoot Canon, I’ve wanted to rent a D300 or D700 for a weekend with a nice 35mm fixed lens and see what I get and how it feels.
You don’t know the horror I just experienced reading that an F5 can be had for $200. Even better reason to hang on to mine – I just couldn’t bear to part with it for that – even though it is still $200 in my pocket vs. being a dust collector.
@Mark: Yeah, they have certainly depreciated, just like the digital cameras! I guess that you could hang on to the F5 until it becomes completely worthless then use it as weight to keep your tripod a little steadier.
Or, as you put in your April Fool’s post, you could go back to the simplicity of film! 
Gorgeous! The sky is pretty amazing. I’d say that is a pretty effective pre-set.