Nikon F50/N50 review: Shoot like a pro for peanuts

By Aaron Gold

“I could make you happy if you weren’t already. I could do a lot of things, and I do.” – Ani DiFranco, “Untouchable Face”

I expected the Nikon N50 (F50 outside the US) to be just another soulless autofocus automaton. Instead, I found an unexpectedly capable film camera that delighted the stuffing out of me – and it cost less than a roll of film! I won’t say the Nikon N50 is as good a 35mm SLR as the vaunted “pro-level” Nikon F4, but I reserve the right to think it from time to time.

A beginner’s camera that’s not for beginners

I bought an F50 (apologies in advance, I’m going to use N50 and F50 interchangeably to please the SEO gods) in the hopes of finding a good Nikon for beginners, something I could recommend to film newbies alongside the Canon Rebel 2000 (EOS 300) and Minolta 400si. After all, that’s how Nikon marketed the N50 when they introduced it in 1994. Like the EM and FG, the F50 was advertised as an easy way for photography novices to get pro-quality Nikon results.

The N50’s killer app was the two-position “SIMPLE/ADVANCED” switch, which gave the camera a split personality. In Simple mode, the F50 operated just like a point-and-shoot, while Advanced turned it into a delightfully flexible hobbyist camera.

(By the way, if you’re wondering why I recommend autofocus SLRs instead of a simple all-manual camera like the Pentax K1000, read this short article by Jim Grey. His thoughts and mine align perfectly.)

Times have changed, and for reasons I’ll expand on shortly, I don’t think the N50 is a great camera for beginners. But I do think it’s a marvelous camera for hobbyists, not least of all because of its giveaway price. In 1994, the N50 had a US MSRP of $535 (about $1,150 in 2025 dollars), with a mail-order price of $379 ($815). In 2025, I bought my N50 – clean, working, and free of the sticky, degraded rubber that often afflicts 1990s cameras – for just US$7, plus tax and shipping. Seven bucks! That’s $3.25 in 1994 dollars, or about five (modern) quid in the UK. And it’s not like I got particularly lucky; as I write this, there are a dozen N50s listed on eBay for $15 or less.

F4 features on the cheap

If you’re wondering what kind of a crappy camera you get for the price of a roll of Kosmo Foto Mono film, allow me to extol the F50’s virtues. It has the same AM200 autofocus module as the Nikon F4, complete with moving-subject focus tracking. Its matrix meter has six segments instead of the F4’s five, though the F4 can meter in lower light. But the F50 has the ability to factor subject distance into its exposure calculations when used with AF-D lenses (Nikon called this “3-D matrix metering”), which the F4 can’t do. The N50 can’t match the F4’s 1/8000 top shutter speed, but its range of 1/2000 to 30 seconds is nothing to sneeze at.

For today’s photographers, the F50 has some particularly useful features, including manual ISO for non-DX-coded film, +/- 5 stops of exposure compensation, and a Time mode for the shutter, more on which in due time. Downsides: no depth-of-field preview and no continuous-shooting mode. The N50 will only take one picture at a time.

Styling-wise, the F50 bears a family resemblance to the Giugiaro-styled F4, though it’s smaller and significantly lighter. That said, at 21 oz (595g) without lens and battery, it’s still a brick compared to competitors from Canon and Minolta. The chunky grip, home to a single CR5 lithium battery, fills the palm nicely, and overall the camera has the same substantial feel that the Nikonisti love to brag about.

In terms of lenses, the N50 isn’t as flexible as some other Nikons. It was designed for Nikkor AF-D lenses, which feed distance information to the camera for that 3-D metering thing, and it will also use AF (no suffix) lenses designed for the F4. (The sample pics were made with my no-suffix AFs as well as a 28-80 AF-D “kit” lens I found on eBay for $25.) But the N50 won’t work with any other F-mounts, including manual-focus lenses. They’ll fit, but metering and autofocus will not function. (That whole “Every Nikon SLR is compatible with every Nikon lens since 1959!” thing is baloney.)

Point-and-shoot plus possibilities

I know a lot of you find using an auto-everything SLRs about as exciting as cleaning your oven, and not much more enjoyable. I spent years espousing the same opinion, but my ageing eyes have forced a closer acquaintance with autofocus cameras, and I’ve tried to approach them with a more open mind. Sure, it’s easy to dismiss the F50 as a glorified point-and-shoot, which isn’t far off when using Simple mode. You can choose from four programs (Auto, Landscape, Portrait, and Close-up), but beyond that, user input is neither required nor allowed, and the viewfinder displays minimal information.

I took a few shots in Simple, and probably could have pointed-and-shot my way through an entire roll with no one being any the wiser. Nikon-quality results with zero expertise; that’s what the ads promised.

But when I changed to Advanced mode, the N50 really came alive for me. Now, I should note that the F50 was introduced before Nikon embraced mode dials and thumbwheels, and user input is achieved through buttons and a dot-matrix-style LCD screen atop the camera. That’s reason I don’t think the F50 is well suited for beginners; while the interface is self-explanatory for experienced filmies, I think new film shooters will find a mode dial, as found on later Nikons like the N60, less confusing. (We’ll talk about those later Nikons in a later review.)

Advanced mode offers program, aperture-priority, shutter-priority and full manual mode (PASM), plus seven scene modes (the three from Simple mode as well as Sport, Silhouette, Night Scene and Motion Effect). You switch between exposure modes by pressing the menu button, then using the four buttons above the LCD screen to pick which mode you want. The F50 has separate buttons for the self-timer and auto-exposure lock and a dial on the front of the camera to disengage autofocus.

Let’s all get shifty

When shooting in A, S or M mode, one pair of the screen-top buttons controls the shutter speed while the other controls aperture. (Though the F50 uses lenses with an aperture ring, aperture is controlled by the body. The lens must be set at its smallest aperture or the screen displays an error.) This led me to some awkward button-fumbling at first, but as both shutter speed and aperture are displayed on the viewfinder’s LCD display (in Advanced mode, at least), it didn’t take me long to figure out which button was which.

In Program mode, the right pair of buttons triggers “program shift”, which lets you change the shutter/aperture combo. If the calculated exposure is, say, 1/250 @ f/8, you can shift one way to 1/500 @ f/5.6, 1/1000 @ f/4, etc, or the other way to 1/125 @ f/11, 1/60 @ f/16, and so on. Program shift is something photographers don’t talk about much today, but it was all the rage when the F50 was new. It’s become my preferred exposure mode, because it’s a little like using aperture-priority and shutter-priority modes at the same time. If you’re relying on the camera’s light meter – and with the matrix meter in the F50, there’s rarely reason not to – program shift gives you full (and fast) control over motion blur and depth-of-field. Added bonus: since the camera’s already in P mode, you’ll rarely miss those spontaneous Kodak moments.

N50, where is your soul?

Like other plasti-cams, the N50 has its low-soul elements. It certainly doesn’t look like a classic camera, and as someone who loves those older machines I miss the feel of a mechanical wind lever under my thumb. The sound the F50 makes when you take a picture – Klack-VEEEET! – is not exactly an aural treat like my old Pentax KX. (That said, I’ve missed dozens of shots because the KX’s shutter wasn’t cocked, and I’ve yet to have that issue with the N50.)

While some have complained about the N50’s (and F4’s) slow autofocus, it’s slow only compared to modern digicams or later-model “pro” film cameras. I spent a morning shooting neon marquees in Los Angeles’ historic theater district, and the complicated lines only threw off the autofocus once (it took two tries for the F50 to focus instead of nailing it the first time). I was shooting with my old metal-barrel push-pull AF Nikkor 35-135 – a lens you can buy nowadays for about $50 – and the only thing slowing me down was the rig’s weight. I felt like I was photographing buildings with a building.

Cool stuff that many other cameras can’t do

Let’s talk about the special features I mentioned above, which I think put the N50 well above the garden-variety autofocus SLR, and which I was quite surprised to find in an entry-level camera. First is the ability to set film speed manually with non-DX-coded film. In the absence of a DX code (for those unfamiliar, that’s the silver-and-black checkerboard on the film canister), most cameras set a default ISO, usually 100. (The N50’s successor, the N60, won’t work at all with non-DX film. Boo, hiss!) That was fine back in the 1990s, when most film had a DX code except for bulk-rolled film. Maybe the camera-makers figured anyone who bulk-rolled to save money couldn’t afford a new camera anyway. (I was a bulk-roller, and they weren’t wrong.)

But today’s film market is stuffed with new and respooled emulsions, and non-DX-coded film seems to be more common nowadays. One of the great joys of analogue photography in the modern age is experimenting with new and different types of film, and with the F50, you can basically use anything that comes stuffed into a 35mm can. Freedom, baby!

That said, the N50 won’t let you override the ISO if your film has a DX code, but this is where those +/- 5 stops of exposure compensation come in handy (as opposed to the two or three stops offered by most SLRs). Let’s say you want to rate your 400-speed Ilford HP5 at 1600 ASA for some night shooting. On your F50, you set EC to -2. What if you find bright street lights throwing off your exposure? No problem, because you can still dial in up to three more stops of negative EC. (That’s one more stop than a Nikon F4 gives you, by the way.) It almost renders the lack of a DX override irrelevant.

Speaking of night shots, instead of a Bulb mode, in which the shutter stays open as long as you hold down the release, the F50 has a Time mode. Press and release the shutter button, and the shutter stays open until you press the button again. (Star trails, anyone?) This is a nice-to-have you won’t find in many consumer-level 35mm SLRs, let alone cameras that cost less than the batteries that power them.

The perfect backup-slash-cheap Nikon, if you have the right lenses

Can you see why I’ve gone ga-ga over this cheap little wonder? I expected a basic, boring-to-use camera, and instead my seven bucks got me an incredibly flexible and useful picture-making machine.

Now, I’m not saying that everyone should run out and sell their Nikon F4 to buy a Nikon N50. But I do think every F4 owner, in fact every Nikonaut who has AF and AF-D lenses, should have one of these. I always recommend traveling with a second lens-compatible body, both as a backup and to give you the option of shooting a second type of film, and the N50, but for its bulk, is a perfect second banana.

If you’re heading into a situation where camera damage is a possibility, then which would you rather risk, your $250 Nikon F4 or your $10 Nikon N50? It’s not like anyone will be able to tell the difference in the pictures.

But it’s not just F4 owners who should consider this little gem. I think the F50 should be on the list for anyone seeking a great all-round autofocus SLR. Here’s a flexible camera with an accurate meter that gives you all the creative control you want – plus you can flip it to Simple, hand it to your non-photographer friends, and as long as they’re sober enough to frame the shot, they’ll get great results. The temptation to spend more for a Nikon F100 or F80 or even an N90s might be great, but remember that this little F50 will do nearly all the same stuff, and just as well.

My plan was to buy the N50 for a review and then give it away, but now that I’ve seen how flexible it is, I’m keeping it. But don’t take my word for it: for the price of a roll of film, you can buy a Nikon N50 and see for yourself.

Nikon N50 / Nikon F50

FOR: Low price, comprehensive feature set, takes photos as good as any AF Nikon.

AGAINST:  Heavy, no backlighting for the external screen, no DOF preview.

VERDICT: A nifty camera that gives you awesome Nikon results without the awesome Nikon price.

Nikon N50 Specifications 

• Type: Autofocus, auto-wind SLR
• Year of introduction: 1994
• Exposure modes: Program (shiftable), aperture- and shutter-priority, manual, portrait, landscape, close-up, sport, night scene, silhouette, motion blur
• Focus: Automatic or manual
• Film advance: Automatic (single frame only)
• Lens mount: Nikon F (AF, AF-D only)
• Shutter: Electronic, metal-blade, vertical travel
• Shutter speed range: 1/2000 – 30 sec + Time
• Flash sync speed: 1/125
• Film speed range: 25-5000 (DX), 6-6400 (non-DX)
• Meter: TTL, open aperture, 6-segment matrix or center weighted
• Meter display: LCD center-the-needle
• Viewfinder info: Focus confirmation, over/underexposure, flash recommended/ready, motion blur warning. Advanced mode only: Shutter speed, aperture, EC in use, light meter
• Focusing aids: Electronic focus confirmation
• Exposure compensation: Yes, +/- 5 stops
• Battery: 2CR5 lithium (1)
• Flash connection: Hot shoe
• Built-in flash: Yes
• Self-timer: Yes
• DOF preview: No
• Mirror lock-up: No
• Data back: Optional (N50QD)
• Weight (body only): 21 oz (595g)

Read more:

• Nikon F50 review on Down the Road
• Nikon F50 review by Mark McMahon
• Nikon F50 review by Canny Cameras
• Nikon F50 review by Alfred Klomp
• Nikon N50 review on Davide.com