arhphotographic

“Maybe you’d carry an SLR more often if you had one that was more fun and less job. Well, here it is. Let the good times roll.”

This is how Nikon pitched the N6006 back in an early 1990’s advertisement. Interestingly in the same advertisement the following comment was made that perhaps shows the thinking behind the release of the camera.

“Nearly seven out of ten professionals who shoot with 35mm carry Nikons because it’s their job. People like Peter Drake (remember him?) carry them because it’s fun.”

Yes it would appear that Nikon was looking to reach a broader customer base of fun loving photographers who, at this time period, were looking elsewhere. In their quest, Nikon sought to produce a camera with all the latest tech, in an easy to use package. Did they succeed?

Using the customary buttons and dial approach of operation the camera certainly seems to have it all. Aperture, Shutter, Manual and Program mode (with exposure compensation). Auto exposure bracketing; spot, center-weighted and matrix metering are all present and very much correct. With a lot of stuff crammed into the camera, it could become very difficult to operate. However as can be seen from the image above, the functions in matte gold (yellow to my eyes) on the left of the camera are turned on/off by pressing the yellow ‘shift’ button on the right.

I have a lot of out of date film to use, so one nice feature was being able to manually select film speed even with a DX coded film. In addition, having a cable release for shutter control is much appreciated. 🙂

It may not be the quietest , but I was pleasantly surprised at how fast the auto focus was. Perhaps not in the same league as my D500, but it’s not far away 🙂 Check it out with the video below.

I’m not sure if it was just my camera, but the shutter button is very sensitive and resulted in the photo below. Perhaps the camera ‘saw’ an opportunity that I didn’t? Or more likely it’s because I’m ham-fisted.

The N6006 has a very good built in flash with a balanced fill flash setting. I’m not a great fan of on-camera flash. Too many times the flash is too powerful for the situations I find myself in. I’m really pleased with the results from the times I used the fill flash setting. The following three photos are examples of when I used it.

I wondered who was eating our lettuce. The ‘slime gang’ are in town.

Having the Nikon F Mount the N6006 takes a wide range of lenses but with varying degress of functionality. When using a manual focus 70-200mm AI lens, the camera top display read F– not very helpful.

What other kind of Cricket ball is there??

The camera has the usual Nikon fit and finish for the time period, which includes a lot of plastic. It felt very good in the hand not too heavy nor light.

As I took my last photo and the camera went to wind on, the camera back popped open. No this is not a feature as it would have exposed the complete roll of film:( Fortunately the film I was using was rated at 64 ISO, so for the brief second or two it was open for proved not to be fatal, in fact there are no signs at all. I later discovered that the film door latch was broken so the camera does not now close at all. I’m just grateful that the incident took place when it did. Despite the door malfunction my experience with the N6006 was still an enjoyable one.

So did Nikon succeed in their goal? I think so. 🙂