>The Nikon F was a very fine camera, but what makes it a professional camera where these others are not? The Nikon F was the first SLR that was so rugged and h

>The Nikon F was a very fine camera, but what makes it a professional camera where these others are not? The Nikon F was the first SLR that was so rugged and had such good lenses that it really made professional press photographers switch from (mostly Leica) rangefinders. As you say there were plenty of SLRs before but they were more seen as fancy cameras for consumers (also there were all kinds of limitations like the mirror not automatically returning for instance) and the optics were usually inferior to rangefinder lenses due to the need to account for the extra space for the mirror box. The viewfinders were also often quite dim.