Nikon F-401X (N4004s)

Put it next to the Canon EOS 1000 in a camera-shop window around 1990 and the Nikon loses on paper. Canon's new EOS bodies focused faster, sounded slicker, and looked like the next thing. The F-401X focused like it was thinking it over. Nikon's early autofocus push was never about speed. It was about handing a working F mount to somebody who had never owned an SLR and getting them a sharp frame anyway.

What you actually hold is plasticky and light, with that early-90s Nikon body shell that creaks a little but never seems to break. The shutter is a focal-plane unit running from a long 30 seconds down to about 1/1000, with flash sync at 1/120, in line with what most of its rivals managed. The finder is a fixed pentaprism, bright enough to work with, with autofocus brackets in the middle and a plain readout along the bottom. No split-prism, since the body handles focus itself. Film loads the way every beginner camera of the era loads: drop the cartridge, pull the leader to the index mark, close the back, and the motor walks it to frame one.

The meter is center-weighted only, no fancy multi-segment pattern, and it drives program, aperture-priority, and shutter-priority modes plus a manual setting that almost nobody used. It is a competent averaging meter that gets fooled the way every center-weighted meter from 1990 gets fooled. Stand a person in front of a bright window and the meter splits the difference, protecting the window and dropping the face toward silhouette. For that kind of scene, pull an incident or spot reading with the Zone Light Meter app off the shadow side of the face, place it on the zone you want, and either set the body in manual or dial in exposure compensation. The center-weighted average is honest, not clever.

It runs on a single 6V 2CR5 lithium cell, and battery life is the honest weakness. The meter and motor are not gentle on it, so a 2CR5 does not last the way you would hope, and a body left loaded in a closet for a few years will give you a dead cell and maybe corrosion in the chamber. The autofocus also hunts in dim rooms or against low-contrast subjects, racking in and out while you wait. You learn to half-press on an edge, lock focus, and recompose.

Today it sits at the very bottom of the price ladder, which is the whole reason to buy one. It takes the same Nikon F glass a fancier body takes, so a cheap F-401X with a 50mm f/1.8 is one of the least expensive ways onto real Nikon optics on film. Cross-shop it against the Canon EOS 650 or 1000, and the choice usually comes down to which mount you already own lenses for. Nobody buys this body for prestige. People buy it because it is ten or fifteen dollars, it still fires, and it puts a good lens in front of the film.