Seems that retro design is buzzing in the outdoor world these days. A quick search on GearJunkie alone found 369 results for the term “retro.”
But how to record all this blast-from-the-past, inspired-by-history gear? Well, let me introduce you to retro term number 370, the Nikon Df.

Yesterday, Nikon introduced a new digital SLR body styled after the old-school Nikon F-series of cameras. With classic looks and even a special 50mm 1.8 lens (sold separately) to match the aesthetic, the Df brings back some memories to this once-pro photog.
The Nikon F-series of cameras were some of the photojournalists’ workhorses of the old-school film days (read: late 1970’s through about 2000). The FM2 was the first pro body I shot at my college paper. My last film body was a bomb-proof F4.

And then came digital.
Well, the $2,746.95 Nikon Df (available for pre-order now with expected delivery around the end of November) is an obviously digital version with old-school F styling and the guts of Nikon’s flagship D4, a big gun 16-megapixel machine used and trusted by news-shooters the world over that costs a wallet-sapping $6,000.
But this is no D4. The Nikon Df, as cool looking as it is, is not meant to compete with the super fast professional D4, the huge-sensored d800, or the magically sensitive d600 pro-sumer camera.
What it does do is fill a niche for portrait and landscape photographers and those who put a premium on light weight and manual controls. This will be a popular camera for more than its looks alone.

