[perardi]

Nikon still sells the Nikon F6 film camera. All existing stock was probably manufactured a loooong time ago, but it is still technically a current product, so I imagine they’re obligated to provide support and government-mandated environmental fixes.

https://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/filmcamera/slr/f6/

(I’d love to see the sales numbers for the F6. I can’t even guess the order of magnitude of global sales per year. 1? 10? 100?)

[formerly_proven]

I still occasionally use a now over 40 years old Nikon FE that, despite having never been serviced as far as I can tell, still works flawlessly. It even does some things better than even the most modern DSLRs, it can, for example automatically expose exposures several minutes long correctly (far outside spec, but works). Impeccable quality. The old Ai-S lenses, too, entirely made from glass, brass, aluminium and some steel with a touch of cement, it pleases the gods. Zeiss still makes them like they used to.

[perardi]

Which is why I’m always surprised the F6, to borrow a phrase from Apple, “remains a product in our lineup”.

There’s so many used and seemingly indestructible film cameras floating around. I guess there’s some market for a factory-warranty film SLR, but I’m not sure what said market is. If I was going to shoot film, I’d find a Nikon F5, which would also double as a medieval flail for self-defense.

(Or I’d pull my 1983 Pentax off the shelf.)

[paulmd]

The F6 is the most advanced and capable film DSLR ever built. If you want/need to shoot film and you shoot subjects that are commonly done with modern digital SLRs and considered out of reach of a film camera, the F6 is the best game in town. The fastest and lowest-light-capable autofocus, the best matrix metering, digital recording of exposure data (just like EXIF but for film!), etc. It is a modern pro camera that happens to shoot film.

Most people don’t need it but it’s certainly unique. If you do need it, there is no substitute.

Nikon actually has a history of doing that as well. The Nikonos series underwater cameras were really the only thing in their class, with unique water-contact optics that avoided rainbow diffraction from the port by putting the optics right against the water. They also made unique 180-degree orthographic lenses for atmospheric surveying - measure cloud cover/etc by photographing the sky every day and get the full horizon to horizon in one frame. etc etc. They really are a fascinating company.

Check out the 1001 Nights of Nikkor, a fascinating series of stories about all that stuff.

https://imaging.nikon.com/history/story/

[formerly_proven]

Some films are really high resolution. Sure, the process is a lot more involved, but you could end up with images sporting the same resolution as today's top end full-frame cameras.

[paulmd]

Today's top-end full frame cameras have better resolution than 35mm film. Even with 4000 dpi drum scans it's hard to go much beyond like 25 megapixels of effective resolution. You can easily get 50 mp full frame digital nowadays - although the lenses to drive that are another problem.

Medium and large format can get more because it's more film area, albeit not as much as you think in practice. It takes specific equipment and good technique, and often you are limited by the shallower depth of field or diffraction. IMO however it is much easier to achieve "reasonable" results comparable with modern full frame digital on MF/LF, because you don't need everything to be insanely high-resolution and perfectly aligned, the larger film area means that you can get good resolution out of "basic" equipment that is doing 2000-3000 dpi compared to the 4000 dpi of a drum scan that is necessary to max out 35mm.

Film also has very different technical characteristics from digital. It has an exponential "shoulder" to the exposure curve that tends to make it resistant to over-exposure, where with digital if it's overexposed it's just gone, clipped to white. It also has very different aesthetics, it just looks different (because each film stock has different exposure characteristics).

Also, some film stocks have unique frequency response curves - the astrophotography community is mourning the loss of Technical Pan film because it was perfect for photographing the hydrogen-alpha emissions of stars. It turns out that this film was developed for the National Reconnaissance Office for satellite surveillance and since they've moved to digital it's no longer being produced.

[perardi]

Yeah. I could get higher resolution out of 8×10 sheet film. If I have it perfectly flat. And if I nail my focus and have everything aligned properly. And if I get it into a scanner properly. A good scanner. That somehow doesn't get dust on it.

Or I can use live view on a 35mm digital camera and nail the focus and exposure exactly. Or if I’m really getting paid, I get a Fuji GFX 100, a 102MP medium-format camera, and get a ludicrous number of pixels.

[PetitPrince]

> digital recording of exposure data (just like EXIF but for film!

Wait; how does that work ? Where is the camera writing the info and how do you retrieve it ?

[paulmd]

It has an internal memory bank and you dump it to a compactflash card with the MV-1 accessory that the other person mentioned.

Personally I think that's a little clunky and it would be better to go with a little transflash card, but the F6 was designed in 2004 and I guess at that point it would have been a SD card and maybe even compactflash and they didn't want the size.

This approach is probably still preferable to direct USB connection though, because presumably that would require utility software that would now be incredibly out of date and tied to like Windows XP or something. If nobody bothered to write an open-source utility then that function would be unusable for modern PCs.

That's a problem on some hardware, I have a scanner where the only software that supports it is tied to Windows XP, or you can use third-party software (VueScan)_that talks to it directly and bypasses the official drivers. It is a scanner designed to do 4x5 film directly (not a flatbed) so replacements are thousands of dollars.

[La1n]

It stores it on a CF card, but I think you need an accessory for it.

https://f6project.com/technical/nikon-mv-1-data-reader/

[ashtonkem]

There's also more demand for largely manual cameras.

The F6 was the flagship 35mm SLR camera once production of new film cameras stopped at Nikon, and as such it's filled with all the features you'd expect of a flagship camera. It'll take a battery grip, it shoots at 8FPS with it, it'll take a separate data recorder to record exposure info, etc. etc.

Except that a lot of people using film today don't want that. The manual old-time simplicity and thoughtfulness is part of the selling point for a lot of those who still use film, and if they wanted to shoot at 8FPS or higher, DSLRs and mirrorless cameras are far better choices on any technical merit. I'd be surprised if the F6 ends up selling out easily.

[rangibaby]

> There’s so many used and seemingly indestructible film cameras floating around. I guess there’s some market for a factory-warranty film SLR, but I’m not sure what said market is. If I was going to shoot film, I’d find a Nikon F5, which would also double as a medieval flail for self-defense.

I heard a couple of years back that Japanese police bought F6s for evidence photography.

There is also a market of camera users who just want the "best", newest thing, with the most features. Look at the difference in prices between the Nikon FE or FM and FM3A, when they are barely different for a photographer with even modest skills

/edit or the Nikon F6 and F100

[jacobush]

There are pros out there who want the support, but shoot film. 3000 USD for a pro is not cheap, but it's in line with other business tools.

[ashtonkem]

For a pro body, $3K is cheap. The flagship Nikon DSLR, the D6, has a MSRP of $6,500.

[wishinghand]

Cement? As in some sort of plastic cement?

[mauvehaus]

Optical cement. Traditionally, Canadian Balsam would have been used, but there are newer adhesives that are apparently easier. I bet UV cured is a lot more practical in a production setting. See this article about using balsam to repair a doublet:

http://forum.mflenses.com/re-cementing-doublet-elements-with...

[zorpner]

Most likely one or another optical cement, for joining lenses into a lens group, for example: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/661086-using-norland-uv-c...

[snowwrestler]

As of December 2019, Nikon was still building new units of the F6.

https://petapixel.com/2019/12/10/you-can-still-buy-a-brand-n...

[thrownblown]

And dude's camera got recalled:

"Taking a look at the serial number of my camera which is 35955 and comparing it to an F6 sold new in 2015 bearing the number 34875 I’d conclude that least 1080 units have been sold since then (approximately 270 cameras per year)."

"In fact, only 152 units are impacted… so few that Nikon actually lists every affected serial number in the recall notice:

0035842, ..., 0035955, ..."

[perardi]

Very clever.

And 270 film SLRs per year sounds perfectly reasonable.

[rangibaby]

There have been consistent rumors that Fujifilm stopped making most or all of their films around 2005 and have been selling old stock since then. I wouldn't be surprised if the same held true for Nikon F6

[randomblast]

Others have mentioned the estimate of 270 derived from serial numbering. Nikon have also said very specifically in this case that they are recalling 152 pieces sold since last July. That will likely be artificially depressed by the covid situation.

[dkuntz2]

Actually the implication from this recall is that they're manufacturing about 12 new F6 bodies per month.

[paulmd]

I would guess on the order of 1000 globally per year, with a lot of those being in Japan. Japan fucking loves film. Maybe a hundred or two hundred in the US.

Maybe 100 on the low end.

edit: from a sister comment the number is approximately 270 per year globally.