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	And so it began
	Medium format
	35mm SLR
	The Exaktas
	The first Nikons
	Her ...
	The kids and the Exaktas
	The Nikkormats
	The FE2
	Into the land of Nikon
	The MD-12s
	Upgrading ...
»	The F4s and beyond
	An endless love story
	Adventures in the Sierra Madre

The very well constructed Nikon F4s has proven to be no less faithful a companion and efficient tool as my first Exa, my Exaktas, my Nikkormats, my Nikons FE2 and later my 8008s.
 

The Nikon F4s, released in 1988 .

It is enough to bring along sufficient reserve AA batteries and having had a good cereal at breakfast to be able to carry it all day long.

Its motor drive, the MB-21, allowing to shoot at 5.3 frames per second, as compared with the 3.2 fps of the MD-12 for the FE2's, is a beauty.

The Nikon F4s is truly a war horse, very versatile and agile; it is difficult to loose the pictures of the inopportune occasion; but high in the mountain with my feet under the snow and my fingers frozen I sometimes would have preferred the controls of the 8008s and a camera body a little bit more light. Maybe I should consider switching the MB-21 power winder for the lighter and smaller MB-20.
 

Perhaps a Nikon N90s/F90x with a MB10. Although supposed to be an amateur model, it was soon adopted by many pros as second body and even as the main one. The Nikon N90s, even with that MB-10 motor drive has almost the same functions than those of the Nikon F4s and weights much less. But enough of that. Dirty Harry never complained about the weight of his 44 magnum.
The newer model, the Nikon F100 is a very interesting and tempting alternative option.  The natural upgrade from the N90s, promises with being amazing, as it has been dubbed "the affordable F5". The Nikon F5 came into market before, in 1996 and since then it has been winking at me. Two things have stopped me from buying it, the excess of functions that I will probably never use (as I said about my first exposure meter camera) and the weight. (Both the weight of the camera and the weight of the peso devaluations).
However, since the photography theme is a passionate affair, maybe I will be interested in returning to my old ways of carrying two bodies wherever I go, for as long as I can carry them. If I decide to do so, they will be F5s with their incredible RGB 3D matrix metering system. My last photographic problem to resolve is what to do with the Nikkormats, the FE2's and all of their lenses. I have never learned to exchange one faithful friend for another, regardless of how attractive the new one looks; much less sell it.

But somehow it hurts to know that one can only visit them from time to time, well kept, but in the closet of the memories.

Maybe a good friend will deserve them ......
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