I bought a Nikon F3HP in March 2015 – it was my first pro model Nikon body and I had been reading good things about it over the past few years. I ran it and its metering through its paces with a couple of rolls of film on a Nikon 50mm f/1.2 lens.
Having a maximum shutter speed of 1/2000 was nice when shooting the 50mm wide open, light permitting. There were times I had to stop down the aperture to f/4 because I couldn’t go up to something like 1/4000. Overall the meter seemed pretty accurate, whether I was shooting in manual mode or automatic, where the camera picks a shutter speed based on the selected aperture.
The shutter has a nice sound to it, and focusing is easy with the split screen in the finder. As long as your battery holds up, everything feels just right for a camera from 1980.
Nikon F3HP
Nikon Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 Ai-S
Kodak Portra 160 at 80
Kodak Gold 100
