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| The Nikon F-601 |
This a review for the Nikon F-601 that stayed with me a bit more than a month before I decided to sell it on. During the stay with me, I shot one film (Tri-X) so i am basing my review on that. I got this camera for the grand total of two pounds. Everything seemed to be working fine although the previous owner had moved on to digital and did not need it any more.
First impressions when you pick up the camera are good. The camera is of a very nice size and all controls and buttons fall comfortably under my fingers. I also like the form of the camera, relatively thin and substantially well made, especially if you keep in mind that this was a mid-tier camera for the enthusiastic amateur. Fit and finish are wonderful, modern cameras can be taught a lot nowadays. Viewfinder is also very nice - bright and big - there is nothing to complain about.
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| An uncluttered interface |
The camera offers everything that you need and nothing that you don't. There are the usual Programme, Aperture priority, Shutter priority and manual, together with a flexible programme and a few flash modes. The build-it flash works well and offers a degree of customisation (exposure compensation and rear curtain synch). The user interface is
a typical Nikon of that period. Not the easiest to follow (my view is that Canon was doing much better at that time) but at the same time, referring to the manual usually is quite enlightening. So far so good with this Nikon.
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| AF missed this one... |
Problems arise the moment you switch on the camera and you press the shutter button. The AF and film advance mechanism sounds like a combination of home blender and office shredder. This is definitely the most noisy AF-SLR i ever had! The AF module in this camera show a lot of the teething problems of the early AF systems. This is a second generation camera and although the speed is good when light is good, things get really difficult when contrast or the light levels are less that ideal. The camera hunts a lot and in many cases it gets the focus completely wrong (see picture). Although the AF-module is sensitive down to -1
EV, you are better off switching to manual when the light is less than good and try to focus manually. Exposure-wise, the camera offers that usual matrix and centre-weighted metering. The F-601's claim to fame was that it was the first camera of its price range that offered spot metering, an exotic feature back at that time. The camera has been quite accurate with exposure, i didn't get any badly exposed pictures.
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| The battery compartment door |
The biggest problem when buying one F-601 is the battery compartment door that it is usually broken. This can happen in two different ways: a) the plastic latch (in red) breaks and there is nothing you can do - you just need to put some tape and hold the door closed or b) the plastic parts (in green) break and the metal plate comes off, leading to the spring which pushes the latch to go missing. You can use super-glue to glue the door but the plastic latch is moving back and forth freely. Once you put the battery in, there is enough friction to keep the door closed, so there is not much of a problem. The Nikon F-601, was Nikon's first camera to use an alkaline battery, but Nikon got it wrong here i am afraid. Instead of going for the more expensive (and more readily available) 2CR5, they chose the more hard to find CR-P2.
Shooting with the F-601 has been a nice experience. The camera is noisy as i previously said but i like the way it balances in my hands and for the two pounds i paid for this, i can honestly say that it was the bargain of the month. I ended up selling this camera though as i felt that it did suffer with many problems from the early AF era. Other cameras in my collection are more refined and perform better overall so there was no point in keeping this one.
ConclusionThe Nikon F-601 is a camera that it is more likely to find it's way in people's bags as a back up body. As I previously said, its AF-module has many problems and the battery door is broken in almost every other sample but luckily enough, the camera can be found very cheap on the market. For anything below £15, this is a great camera to have, usually around £20 it is a fair buy but there is no point in paying more than that as for the same price you can have a F801 (and it's "s" variant) which is a better camera overall.