It came nestled in its original box and foam insert, complete with the little white plastic bottom plate cover. My third F3 arrived from Colorado in a few days. Besides, I’ve gotten pretty good at knowing how much to pay for an old camera and still leave some room to make some money if I had sell it. If you’ve followed my blog for any time at all, you know it wouldn’t be the first time that I have given a camera a second (or third) whirl and changed my mind. I just never clicked with the F3 and had one of my trusted sellers, Josh Cohen at Victory Camera, not sent me a photo of an almost new, minty Nikon F3HP he just got into his shop, I’d probably never have given this camera another thought, but as I gazed at the photos of the subject camera, I got to thinking that maybe I’d never given the F3 a fair shot. In fact, the bookends to the F3, the wonderful Nikon F2 and the revolutionary Nikon F4 are two of my all time favorite cameras. I never regretted parting ways with either of my first two F3s. Didn’t need another camera, had too many already and my second F3 only saw a roll or two before I gifted it to another photo friend. I got my second F3 about five or six years ago from a photo friend who was selling off some nice gear to fund a Leica acquisition.

I loved shooting that N90s, so my first F3 sat mostly in a camera bag until I sold it during my divorce in 2000. Not because it wasn't a nice camera, but because the N90s was a GREAT camera and auto-focus was such a marvel. I didn’t need the F3, but it was a gently used trade in and the price was right. I was getting back into film photography in a big way and had bought a new Nikon N90s and 50/1.8 AF-D kit a year or so before.

The first was purchased used at Lewis Camera Exchange in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1994.

Nikon f3