I have wanted the Nikon F90X for a long time, especially when I was originally shooting film. At the time it felt like an achievable aspiration, with the F4 and F5 well beyond my financial reach. As it turned out, I only made it as far as the F801s, which was my go-to, along with the FM2n, when I went to the Himalayas all those years ago.
Wind forward some 20-ish years and all of the above are reasonably priced, but the F90X is an astonishingly and ridiculously cheap camera. I picked up mine, with a decent 35-80mm kit lens and battery grip, for a mere £90.
This thing is a beast, not least because of the battery grip, as the normal battery insert is broken so I ‘have to’ use the grip. I love this thing. It’s weighty, incredibly fully featured and shooting with it is a joy. The autofocus is decently quick, if noisy and everything is ergonomically available and easy to use. And it has a battery grip that I have to use.
The image quality is spot on, the images from the test roll below (Cinestill 50D, a brave choice given how rare and stupidly expensive colour film is these days), shot using the kit lens (since substituted for a nifty 50 1.8) are rather pleasing and better than I expected.
