End of an Era

[Mike Farley]

After 61 years and six iterations, it looks as though the Nikon F series has been discontinued. The last model, the F6 came out in 2004 at around the same tome as digital cameras were starting to gain in popularity, but has remained available since then. Over the past few years, from time to time Nikon has released a few cameras which were probably from the last batch made a while ago. Do not quote me on that as Nikon could have been assembling them using from a stock of parts. So far as production of film cameras goes, it seems that Leica is the last major* manufacturer standing. The company's operating model is suited to making cameras in low volumes since it can charge a sufficiently high price to ensure it is worthwhile. All the current models are rangefinders which keeps costs more manageable by avoiding the added complications introduced by a SLR mirror box

https://store.leica-camera.com/uk/en/analogue-m-cameras

The news about the demise of the Nikon F6 is, or will be, on the usual sites but the link below to an article on Mike Johnston's blog at The Online Photographer will be one of the more thoughtful:

https://store.leica-camera.com/uk/en/analogue-m-cameras

* That will depend on how anyone classifies a company such as Lomography which specialises in low cost film cameras.