F4E aw faw down go BOOM!

STM

Senior Member
I was out shooting some wading birds yesterday with just the F4E and F5 and some Fuji 400. It is already getting pretty hot here in SC (84º and humid here today) so my hands were a little sweaty. One thing I have never liked about the F4 is that the leather, though very attractive, is slick as owl sh*t if your hands are wet. I laid my 400mm f/2.8 down on the lens shade, unlocked the F4 and picked it up. It slipped out of my hand and fell finder first onto the rocks of the jetty with a blood curdling "thump". I looked down and it was sitting between two rocks with the finder off, the microprism/split image focusing screen popped out and the battery back displaced. There were some broken pieces of plastic :mad:, one of which has a torn circuit ribbon hanging off of it lying on the rocks beside the body. Well damn! The other thing that has always bothered me about the F4 is that Nikon made the top and finder out of PLASTIC. WTF Nikon? This was your flagship professional camera for a while! No OTHER Nikon film flagship ever had plastic finders or top pieces. My F5 is made of titanium on the outside.

Had that piece just above the lens mount not gotten broken off, I could have just gotten away with another DP-20 (which run between $75-100 on Ebay) and be done with it. The MB-23 just got knocked loose a little but appears otherwise undamaged, not even any dings. IT is made of metal. I still love the F4 because it feels so good in the hands, and found a mint condition F4 (the original model, no auxiliary battery pack just the 3 batteries in the camera itself) with the DP-20 for just a hair over $200 on EBAY so I snapped it up. It is coming from Japan and I specifically asked the seller if any of the LCD's in the finder had any bleed through (a common thing for them at this point) and he said no, they were perfect. I will just put the MB-23 on it like the last one and poof! it is now F4E. I am pretty bummed because I have had that camera for over 25 years but oh well, sh*t happens!

F4 afu.jpg
 

STM

Senior Member
Ouch! That's painful.

It was a cringeworthy moment for sure! In nearly 50 years of doing photography I cannot ever remember dropping a camera body before this one, I have certainly dropped a few lenses, but never a body.
 
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