SLR Cameras for Underwater Photography

 

- The Nikon F100

Nikon has a long history of introducing a top of the range camera, aimed at professional users (or amateurs with a lot of money...) and brimming with the latest & greatest technology, and then cascading down various versions of the that technology in "prosumer" & "consumer" versions.

At the end of the 1990's Nikon's flagship camera for professionals was the mighty F5 - a really great camera, but big & expensive! So when they released their prosumer version, the Nikon F100, containing most of the functionality of the F5 but at 2/3 the wieght and about US$800 cheaper it turned out to be a very popular camera.

As it turned out, the F100 was the last of Nikon's prosumer film cameras as the next camera aimed at the serious amateur photographer was the digital D100. When the F100 was released in 1999 I was still using the Nikon F801 and Subal housing I had bought 4 years earlier and could not justify the cost of upgrading, mainly because at that time the F801 was still much better than I was....

However, in 2001 I found a second-hand F100 in great condition for sale in Singapore & bought it on impulse for use on land and then about 3 months later I saw a second-hand Subal F100 housing for sale in Sydney. The housing was about 65% of the price of a new housing and in good condition, but I knew the D100 was coming....

An upcoming trip to PNG convinced me to upgrade and as such I was very happy with the functionality of the F100 when used underwater, compared to the F801.

It's a very interesting exercise to write this page in 2009 and look back on the 8 years since I bought the F100. During that time I have progressed through using the D100, the D200 and now the D300 Nikon cameras for underwater photography. Each upgrade I made was done for good reasons at the time, based on an honest assessment I made of my skill level and whether I would benefit from additional functionality available with the new camera.

As such, I think I made the right decision each time as I feel I have clearly moved up the underwater photography learning curve over those 8 years. However, writing this page had made me review many of the images I took underwater with the F100 and I was pleasantly surprised at their quality and sharpness!

When I bought my D100 and Subal housing I decided to keep the F100 & housing as a back-up rig, but I became so enamoured with digital that it has sat in my camera cupboard for the last six years. So after looking at those film images again I decided it was time to dust off the F100 & Subal housing and see what I could do with it.

http://www.bythom.com/F100.htm

To be continued.....

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