Glass Bodies a variant-level encyclopedia of vintage lenses and cameras by iwillpat

Nikon F3

Nippon Kogaku · Nikon F mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back · 1980

Also known as: Nikon F3HP · Nikon F3/T · Nikon F3P · Nippon Kogaku Nikon F3 · ニコンF3

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
F3 (DE-2 eye-level finder) Nikon F 1980–2000 — No separate figure published
F3HP (High-Eyepoint, DE-3 finder) Nikon F 1982–2000 — No separate figure published
F3/T (titanium) Nikon F 1982–1988 T82xxxxx
T85xxxxx 		No figure published
F3P (press) Nikon F 1983–1999 P9xxxxxx No figure published
F3AF Nikon F 1983–1983 83xxxxx No figure published
F3 Limited Nikon F 1993 L95xxxxx No figure published
F3H (high speed) Nikon F 1996 H96xxxxx About 100, on official reports from Nikon as relayed by English Wikipedia. No serial-backed count has been published
  1. "Total sales volume exceeded 751,000 (as of September 1992)" — Nikon's own history. That is a sales figure at a date, not a production total: the camera went on being built for another eight years, and no final number has ever been published.
  2. Twenty-one years in the catalogue. The F4 arrived in 1988 and the F5 in 1996, and the F3 outlived both of their introductions.
  3. Kodak built the DCS 100 of 1991 — the first commercial digital SLR, 1.3 megapixels with a tethered digital back — on an F3 body. Mike Eckman's history of the camera records it. The F3 is therefore the second Nikon film body after the F80 to have been turned into a digital camera by another manufacturer, and the earlier of the two by nine years.
  4. Two F3 bodies modified to NASA specifications were delivered in May 1980, and a 72-exposure version flew on the first Space Shuttle flight, STS-1, on 12 April 1981 — Mike Eckman's account. Nikon's own history says only that the camera was commercialized in conjunction with the NASA development.
  5. Josh Solomon reports the shutter was stress-tested to 150,000 exposures, describes the titanium curtains as honeycombed, counts eleven ball bearings in the film advance lever, and gives the pinhole mirror as passing about 8 per cent of the light to the meter. Nikon has published none of these figures in the pages this project could reach, so they rest on one reviewer.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • The meter moved into the body. A silicon photodiode reads a mirror pierced with about 50,000 pinholes, so metering no longer depends on which finder is fitted
  • An LCD strip in the finder showing the shutter speed — the first on a professional Nikon
  • A red shutter release button ringed in the body's own trim, and a Giugiaro red stripe on the grip
  • The flash shoe sits at the base of the rewind knob, not on the prism, so a finder change does not disturb it
  • A mechanical backup lever that fires at about 1/60 with no battery at all

F3 (DE-2 eye-level finder):

  • The low-profile DE-2 prism; 148.5 × 96.5 × 65.5 mm and about 715 g

F3HP (High-Eyepoint, DE-3 finder):

  • A taller, squarer prism: 148.5 × 101.5 × 69 mm and about 760 g
  • Lower magnification than the DE-2 — the whole frame is visible in spectacles

F3/T (titanium):

  • Titanium top, bottom and prism covers, and a T prefix to the serial number

F3P (press):

  • A titanium DE-5 prism with a standard ISO accessory shoe and no eyepiece blind
  • A rubber-covered shutter release with no cable thread, and a taller shutter speed knob
  • A round frame counter window with white numerals

F3AF:

  • The DX-1 autofocus finder, with the focus electronics in the prism rather than the body

F3 Limited:

  • An L prefix, special badging, and a plain back in place of the F3P's auto-stop MF-6

F3H (high speed):

  • A fixed pellicle mirror passing 30% of the light to the finder, which therefore never blacks out

Serial-range notes

120xxxx – 200xxxx
The main run, March 1980 to June 2000, per Nico van Dijk. Six digits with no prefix; the F3 and F3HP are numbered together, because HP is a finder and not a different body.
201xxxx
Van Dijk records this block as parts stock rather than complete cameras.
T82xxxxx and T85xxxxx
F3/T. Champagne titanium December 1982 – March 1984; black September 1984 – July 1988.
P9xxxxxx
F3P, April 1983 – March 1999. A sixteen-year run for a camera never in the general catalogue.
83xxxxx
F3AF, April – December 1983.
L95xxxxx
F3 Limited, from October 1993 on van Dijk's dating.
H96xxxxx
F3H, May – November 1996.

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back
Finder
Interchangeable pentaprism, DE-2 as standard and DE-3 on the HP; four other finders available, and 21 focusing screens beyond the standard Type K · 100% coverage · no rangefinder image
Shutter
titanium foil, focal plane, horizontal, electromagnetically controlled · 8s – 1/2000 stepless on aperture priority; 16 quartz-controlled steps from 8s to 1/2000 in manual, plus X, B and T; mechanical backup at about 1/60 · flash sync X at 1/80 · self-timer
Film advance
single-stroke lever, 140° throw with a 30° stand-off; motor drive by MD-4
Back
hinged; interchangeable with the MF-6 auto film-stop back, the MF-14 data back and the MF-4 250-exposure magazine
Meter
TTL centre-weighted 80/20 full-aperture, silicon photodiode in the body reading a pinhole mirror. EV 1 to 18 at ISO 100 with an f/1.4 lens; film speeds ISO 12 to 6400.
Motor drive
MD-4 — 4 frames a second with the reflex mirror working, 6 with it locked up — against 4 on the F2. Giugiaro styled the body and the MD-4 as one object, which is why they meet flush.
Designed by
Giugiaro Giorgetto — exterior design of the body and of the MD-4 motor drive, treated as a single form
Weight
715 g
Dimensions
148.5 × 96.5 × 65.5 (F3); 148.5 × 101.5 × 69 (F3HP) mm
Country
Japan
Original price
175,000 yen with the 50mm f/1.4 at release in March 1980; US$1,174.90 with the same lens in 1981. The F3AF was 250,000 yen for the body with the DX-1 finder. (today ¥259,000)
Accessories
DE-2 and DE-3 eye-level prisms; DE-5 titanium prism on the F3P · DX-1 autofocus finder (F3AF) · MD-4 motor drive and MN-2 nicad pack · MF-6 auto film-stop back, MF-14 data back, MF-4 250-exposure magazine

Where sources disagree

F3 Limited, first year
  • October 1993 (Nico van Dijk, from the L95xxxxx serial block)
  • 1994 (English Wikipedia)

Better supported: Unresolved

A few months apart, and the camera was sold only in Japan, so an export price list will not settle it. Van Dijk's date comes from serials, which is the stronger kind of evidence, but he does not say where the block dates came from.

F3/T champagne, end of production
  • March 1984 (Nico van Dijk, T82xxxxx block)
  • 'quickly discontinued around 1985' (English Wikipedia)

Better supported: Van Dijk

The black T85xxxxx block starts in September 1984 on the same table, which leaves no room for champagne production running into 1985 unless the two overlapped.

F3H, first year
  • May–November 1996 (Nico van Dijk, from the H96xxxxx serial block)
  • 1998 (Mike Eckman, who ties the camera to the Nagano winter games; English Wikipedia makes the same Nagano association)

Better supported: Van Dijk

Weighed rather than left open. The serial prefix itself reads 96, and van Dijk's block is dated evidence taken off the cameras. Neither source on the other side is dating a build: English Wikipedia says the F3H "was introduced for press, sports photography and for the 1998 Nagano Olympics in Japan", which states what the camera was for, not when it was made, and Mike Eckman's single line — "In 1998 a model called the Nikon F3H was produced for the Nagano Olympics in Japan" — carries the same Nagano association with no evidence of its own behind it, so the two are best read as one claim rather than two. Read that way there is no real conflict: a body numbered and built in 1996 for a games held in February 1998 satisfies both. That reconciliation is this project's reading and is stated by nobody; Nikon has published no dates for the F3H at all, so the 1996 in years.first rests on the serial block alone.

What reviewers say

History

The F3 reached the market in March 1980 at 175,000 yen with a 50mm f/1.4, and Nikon says plainly that it was commercialized in conjunction with the cameras being developed to NASA specifications. It replaced a fully mechanical camera with an electronically controlled one, offered aperture-priority automation on a professional body for the first time, and then spent its first years being distrusted for both.

Two answers to the distrust are built into the camera. The first is the small lever beside the lens mount that trips the shutter at about 1/60 with no battery in the body at all, so a dead cell costs a photographer one shutter speed rather than the day. The second is the meter, which moved out of the finder and into the body — a silicon photodiode reading a mirror pierced with roughly fifty thousand pinholes, each an ellipse of twenty by thirty micrometres. Metering no longer depended on which prism was fitted, which is why the F3 has one meter and six finder options where the F2 had six meters.

Giugiaro drew the outside, and drew the MD-4 motor drive at the same time, which is why the two meet flush instead of merely bolting together. The red stripe on the grip is his. So, arguably, is the durability of the design: the F3 stayed in the catalogue until 2001, past the introduction of the F4 in 1988 and the F5 in 1996, and press agencies kept buying the F3P version until 1999.

The variants divide along two lines. Finder first: the original DE-2 gives the F3, and the taller DE-3 of March 1982 gives the F3HP, which is a different prism on the same body and shares its serial sequence. Everything else takes a letter prefix — T for the titanium F3/T in champagne then black, P for the weathersealed F3P, L for the Japan-only F3 Limited, H for the pellicle-mirror F3H that runs 13 frames a second, and a plain 83xxxxx block for the F3AF, Nikon’s first autofocus camera, which lasted eight months and two lenses.

Nikon’s own history records that “total sales volume exceeded 751,000 (as of September 1992)”. That sentence is doing less work than it appears to. It is sales rather than production, it is a floor rather than a count, and it stops eight years before the camera did. No final total has been published for the F3, and none of the lettered variants has a published figure at all — the F3H’s hundred cameras rest on a single relayed report, and the F3 Limited cannot yet be dated to a year that two sources agree on.

Expand Collapse

This history is AI-written, from the sources listed at the foot of the page. Where the record is silent it says so rather than filling the gap — but no human wrote these sentences.

Photographs

Nikon F3
Nikon F3 HP — Arne List, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Nikon F3
Nikon F3 with the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 — Martintoy, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
Nikon F3
Nikon F3: Giugiaro's red stripe — Austin Calhoon, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $580 across 69 fixed-price listings on 2026-10-19 (middle half $450–$800). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 11 days: up 24% from $470.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-10-19$580$450–$80069
2026-10-18$590$450–$82071
2026-10-17$590$450–$82071
2026-10-16$580$450–$75070
2026-10-15$580$480–$90065
2026-09-21$530$420–$90072
2026-09-18$420$65–$600105
2026-09-11$460$50–$65093
2026-09-10$470$55–$70097
2026-09-08$470$55–$70097
2026-09-06$470$55–$70097

Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.

Show 110 more listings

Buying from Yahoo! Auctions outside Japan. It is a domestic marketplace: sellers ship within Japan, and most will not register an overseas buyer. A proxy service bids on your behalf, receives the item and forwards it, for a fee and a wait. Buyee, Jauce and ZenMarket each accept a Yahoo auction number directly. Listed alphabetically for information — none is recommended over another, and none of these is an affiliate link.

Listings updated 2026-10-19. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Related: Nikon F2 · Nikon F4 · Nikon F5

Lenses for this body: Medical-Nikkor 120mm f/4 IF · Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 · Micro-Nikkor 200mm f/4 · Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 · Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/3.5 · Nikkor 105mm f/1.8 · Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 · Nikkor 135mm f/2 · Nikkor 135mm f/2.8 · Nikkor 180mm f/2.8 ED · Nikkor 200mm f/2 IF-ED · Nikkor 20mm f/2.8 · Nikkor 24mm f/2 · Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 · Nikkor 28mm f/2 · Nikkor 300mm f/2.8 ED · Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 · Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 (F mount) · Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 · Noct-Nikkor 58mm f/1.2 · PC-Nikkor 28mm f/3.5 · PC-Nikkor 35mm f/2.8 · Reflex-Nikkor 1000mm f/11 · Reflex-Nikkor 500mm f/8

Sources (9)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this camera, know a serial number I'm missing, or can see where I have it wrong, tell me — corrections, serials and sample photos are all worth having.