Skip to main content

Nikon F-601

The Nikon F-601
This a review for the Nikon F-601 that stayed with me a bit more than a month before I decided to sell it on. During the stay with me, I shot one film (Tri-X) so i am basing my review on that. I got this camera for the grand total of two pounds. Everything seemed to be working fine although the previous owner had moved on to digital and did not need it any more.
First impressions when you pick up the camera are good. The camera is of a very nice size and all controls and buttons fall comfortably under my fingers. I also like the form of the camera, relatively thin and substantially well made, especially if you keep in mind that this was a mid-tier camera for the enthusiastic amateur. Fit and finish are wonderful, modern cameras can be taught a lot nowadays. Viewfinder is also very nice - bright and big - there is nothing to complain about.

An uncluttered interface
The camera offers everything that you need and nothing that you don't. There are the usual Programme, Aperture priority, Shutter priority and manual, together with a flexible programme and a few flash modes. The build-it flash works well and offers a degree of customisation (exposure compensation and rear curtain synch). The user interface is
a typical Nikon of that period. Not the easiest to follow (my view is that Canon was doing much better at that time) but at the same time, referring to the manual usually is quite enlightening. So far so good with this Nikon.

AF missed this one...
Problems arise the moment you switch on the camera and you press the shutter button. The AF and film advance mechanism sounds like a combination of home blender and office shredder. This is definitely the most noisy AF-SLR i ever had! The AF module in this camera show a lot of the teething problems of the early AF systems. This is a second generation camera and although the speed is good when light is good, things get really difficult when contrast or the light levels are less that ideal. The camera hunts a lot and in many cases it gets the focus completely wrong (see picture). Although the AF-module is sensitive down to -1
EV, you are better off switching to manual when the light is less than good and try to focus manually. Exposure-wise, the camera offers that usual matrix and centre-weighted metering. The F-601's claim to fame was that it was the first camera of its price range that offered spot metering, an exotic feature back at that time. The camera has been quite accurate with exposure, i didn't get any badly exposed pictures.

The battery compartment door
The biggest problem when buying one F-601 is the battery compartment door that it is usually broken. This can happen in two different ways: a) the plastic latch (in red) breaks and there is nothing you can do - you just need to put some tape and hold the door closed or b) the plastic parts (in green) break and the metal plate comes off, leading to the spring which pushes the latch to go missing. You can use super-glue to glue the door but the plastic latch is moving back and forth freely. Once you put the battery in, there is enough friction to keep the door closed, so there is not much of a problem. The Nikon F-601, was Nikon's first camera to use an alkaline battery, but Nikon got it wrong here i am afraid. Instead of going for the more expensive (and more readily available) 2CR5, they chose the more hard to find CR-P2.

Shooting with the F-601 has been a nice experience. The camera is noisy as i previously said but i like the way it balances in my hands and for the two pounds i paid for this, i can honestly say that it was the bargain of the month. I ended up selling this camera though as i felt that it did suffer with many problems from the early AF era. Other cameras in my collection are more refined and perform better overall so there was no point in keeping this one.

Conclusion
The Nikon F-601 is a camera that it is more likely to find it's way in people's bags as a back up body. As I previously said, its AF-module has many problems and the battery door is broken in almost every other sample but luckily enough, the camera can be found very cheap on the market. For anything below £15, this is a great camera to have, usually around £20 it is a fair buy but there is no point in paying more than that as for the same price you can have a F801 (and it's "s" variant) which is a better camera overall.

Comments

  1. Stenba686 December 2017 at 04:52

    I got 2 working date back ones for £10, both work, both came with batteries, you can get these on ebay and battery stores, not that hard to find, one looks fine the the other has had its decles half removed, it was the "f triple missing from my colection, only the f601m to find. On the whole, a cheap as a sugared ring donut film slr that does everything well, not superbly or badly, so a good first or back up film slr

    ReplyDelete
  2. Stenba686 December 2017 at 07:24

    I got 2 for £10 both work fine, battery doors are fine too, only ever seen 1 with this problem

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown8 May 2018 at 19:55

    Woow ! I found your blog by chance and it really is wonderful!
    I'm reading everything Do you have any place to see the pictures that you take? It's funny because the cameras t
    hat you say (and in the coments) "economic" in Argentina are really expensive, a luxury.
    I would love to go to analog photography fairs in England. It must be crazy.
    Greetings from Buenos Aires. keep it up.💜

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Panagiotis Giannakis9 May 2018 at 11:54

      Here are the pictures:
      http://monochrome-archives.blogspot.co.uk/

      Delete
  4. Anonymous16 May 2024 at 12:36

    I got one in box, looks unused, for cheap in the past year or so. Looking back I wish the F-601(N6006) came out a little sooner or that the Canon EOS 1000/Rebel or 10s had come out sooner. That is because in late 1989 my family bought a Canon EOS 750 for an overseas vacation that would be in the spring of 1990. We traded in a Canon AE-1 in the process. I was about old enough to drive yet didn't know anything about the in's and out's of photography and my father who used a Yashica Electro 35 GSN instead of the AE-1 knew even less. The decision came to me, since I knew how to use the family computer!

    My thinking is: a camera that could be fully automated in both exposure and focus (like the EOS 850 and 750) would do nicely for the vacation. I think the aperture ring of the AE-1 stayed on "A" (not that I knew why I'd ever want to control it myself ... depth of field was a mystery then) so at least we had apterture priority (want blur? or freeze the action? you decide!). But only having program mode took that away. As I became interested in photography, I later realized that I had some freedom taken away by trading in the AE-1. Even the EOS 700 let you choose your shutter speed. But that was not out yet. Adjusting the budget to get an EOS 600(630) or F801(N8008) would work too. But the F-601 (like the EOS 10 and Elan(100) or even 1000(Rebel) ) would hit that sweet spot of providing comfort in knowing you aren't screwing up your important shots as you might find yourself disctracted by being tourist yet there would be room to grow in photography over the next few years.

    What wound up happening is that in 1993 I bought an EOS 10s (instead of the Elan/100) and within a later an EOS RT. And since I had to replace the delicate mirror in the RT, I was spared when my 10s was stolen (the RT was a few days away from being fixed in the shop). And in 1994 I also found a used late 70's Canon F-1 and a college friend (he had a K1000 but I forgive him for that!) showed me how to develop my own B&W. Now THAT was a giant leap forward in my photography journey. If the F-601/N6006 was on the market in the autumn of 1989 AND if it would not get stolen then I could have made do with one camera all that time. And I wouldn't turn into the collector who has enough equipment to open a store.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous18 May 2024 at 18:52

    When you said "The Nikon F-601 was Nikon's first camera to use an alkaline battery" did you mean the first to use a lithium battery? The previous cameras used alkaline or silver or (egads!) mercury. I noticed in some early photography magazine's buyer's guide matrix that a lot of Nikons used AA or AAA but the F601/N6006 seemed to be the switcher to lithium but alas not 2CR5 list most other cameras that had done such (like all EOS up to that point).

    I hadn't even heard of the style of battery the F601/N6006 used and I certainly didn't see it in stores. While 2CR5 is not too common (maybe I've seen it at Walmart and Target) you can get it online and 123 and CR2 are still in stores (having the need to buy both the other month for a Nikon 35Ti and Olympus LT Zoom that I bought while left unsupervised and access to credit card). My N6006 is new(ish) and box and my only plans are to gaze upon it. Rather, I enjoy my N8008s which, as in another post here, is a nicer size than my N90s (F90x) (I still like it too, just ever so slightly less - except when shooting in dark and I want a backlight for the external lcd).

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous20 August 2025 at 11:37

    "And I wouldn't turn into the collector who has enough equipment to open a store."

    I nearly fell out of my chair laughing, I'm right there buddy!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nikon F801s

The venerable Nikon F801s  This is a review of the Nikon F801s and it's progenitor, the F801. I've been using the F801s for a few months now and I own a plain F801 since 2017. As it is usually the case, it was an impulsive buy, it was for £0.99 with no bids online and I decided that I wanted to compare it with the old trusty F801. * Background information and history. Nikon joined the AF race quite early on in 1986 - Minolta's surprising announcement of the Dynax 7000/9000 the year before forced Nikon to release a modified version of the F301 with an AF module - the F501AF. Canon joined a year later with the first EOS camera (EOS 650) featuring a new lens mount with no backwards compatibility. Nikon's F501 used a very basic AF module with 96 CCDs  - this was eventually replaced by the "legendary" (the emphasis is mine) AM200 module (an array of 20 by 10 CCDs) which found its way in all AF Nikons - from F401 to the F4 and even the third generation ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pentax MZ-50

Cute... This was an impulsive buy - found it for £5 and thought i could have it. It came with 2 CR-2 batteries and initial testing at the shop showed that it worked well. Anyway, the batteries alone cost more than £5. I am not sure how did Pentax experienced the 1990's. Pentax was big in the swinging and dancing 60's with the Spotmatic, did very well in the 70s with the MX and it was the LX that dominated Pentax's pro-line in the 80s. But in the 90s Pentax did not come up with any pro camera and did not introduce any exotic lenses either. The different iterations of the Z-1 were good cameras but in the same league such as the Nikon F90 or Canon EOS5. If you scroll down my blog you will find a review of the Z1 - a very good camera which I sold due to the complicated user interface.  I have to say that the photographic press was pleasantly surprised by the Z-20. I don't see a lot of them coming up online and some of the reviews I read describe it as functiona...
Post a Comment
Read more

Olympus 35DC

Pretty little thing This is a review of the Olympus 35 DC rangefinder. After i shot a film with it, i realized that it needed a CLA, so i will come back to it in the future and add a long lasting impressions section to this post. You know when you are going to have a good day - you walk down the street to go to your local car boot sale and you find a one pound coin and then you go to the sale and you find a nice Olympus 35 DC for £2. The previous owner stated that the camera belonged to his father, used it a few years ago before switching to digital and all pictures came out fine. So i thought.... yea why not, lets not haggle on this one. There were plenty of 35mm fixed lens rangefinder from Olympus during the 60's - too many to remember - all sold with beautiful Zuiko lenses. The Olympus 35xx series peaked with the 35SP during the late 60's. The 35SP was succeeded by the 35RD - Olympus dropped the spot metering and the 7 elements lens was scaled down to...
2 comments
Read more