Nikon F-401

Nippon Kogaku · Nikon F mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film · 1987

via machine translation — corrections welcome

Also known as: Nikon N4004 · Nikon N4004s · Nikon N5005 · ニコンF-401

Variants & identification

Variant	Mount	Years	Serial ranges	Production
F-401	Nikon F	1987	—	No figure published
F-401s	Nikon F	1989	—	No figure published
F-401x	Nikon F	1991	—	No figure published

The metering pattern was corrected here. This entry carried TTL centre-weighted 60/40, the pattern of the F-301 and F-501, and no source has been found that says it of the F-401. Nikon's own product-archive page for the model heads its key features with "Advanced AE with unique triple-sensor metering", and three outside descriptions agree: awane-camera's museum page gives "3分割マルチパターン測光，マニュアル露出時は中央部重点測光" — three-segment multi-pattern, centre-weighted when set to manual — the specification memo at mgnt16 gives 3分割マルチパターン測光, and ob-scura gives マルチパターン開放測光. awane's line also accounts for how the centre-weighted reading arose: it is what the camera does in manual, and only in manual.
Flash sync is given as 1/100 by the Japanese specification memo at mgnt16 and by the ob-scura page. The Chens' review gives 1/100 in program and aperture priority and 1/125 set manually; no other source examined mentions a second figure, and it is recorded here rather than folded into the specification.
The AM200 focusing module belongs to the 1987 camera, not to the F-401s, and Nikon's product archive says so on both pages. The F-401's key features list "Nikon AM200 AF sensor"; the F-401S's describe an "Upgraded F-401 (1987) with ultra-fast AF even in dim light by Advanced AM200 sensor". So the 1989 camera did not receive a new module — it received a better version of the one the original already had. Wikipedia and camera-wiki give the AM200 to the F-401s; the Chens' 2011 user review, which describes the original F-401 as carrying an AM200 sensor of 200 CCDs, matches the maker.
No published weight for the body has been found in a maker's document. The Chens' review gives 645g, and Alan D at Canny Cameras writes that with its four AA cells in it weighs as much as a metal Nikkormat. Neither is a factory figure, so no weight is recorded in the table.
Akagi Koichi gives the F-401X's slow limits as eight seconds in program and thirty in aperture priority, which is finer than the flat "30s" usually quoted for the model.
No production figure has been published for any of the three, and no serial blocks. Nikon's Camera Chronicle, which devotes an article to the F-501 and F-301 together, covers the F-401 nowhere: the maker's narrative history of its cameras skips this line. The product archive is a separate thing and does carry all three, but as a page of key features each — no specification table, and no dates beyond the model years.
DX coding sets film speed automatically from ISO 25 to 5000; the body meters from EV 1 to EV 19 at ISO 100 with an f/1.4 lens.
Almost no older lens will meter here: the F-401 has no aperture-indexing coupling at all — awane-camera records the AI coupling lever as omitted — so manual-focus AI and AI-S Nikkors give no automatic exposure on it. This is the one body in this family where an older lens is dead weight rather than a slower way of working. Whether a pre-AI lens will physically mount at all is separately disputed.

How to tell them apart (expand)

Flash built into the prism housing, guide number 12
No aperture ring in use: the body's thumbwheel sets the diaphragm
Four AA cells in the handgrip
Larger and deeper than the F-501 at 154 × 102 × 65.5mm

F-401:

Flash raised into the top of the prism housing — the first on a Nikon reflex
Aperture set by a thumbwheel on the body, not by the ring on the lens
AM200 autofocus sensor, per Nikon's product archive — the F-401s carries an improved version of the same module

F-401s:

s suffix on the front engraving; the body is otherwise the F-401's

F-401x:

Timed exposures to 30 seconds; the earlier two stop at 1 second

F-401: North America received it as the N4004. The end of production is not published; accounts that give a range put the first version at 1987 to 1989, which is simply the interval before the F-401s appeared.
F-401s: April 1989. Nikon's product archive calls it an "Upgraded F-401 (1987) with ultra-fast AF even in dim light by Advanced AM200 sensor" — so the change is a better version of the module the 1987 camera already had, not a different one. camera-wiki, which names the AM200 as the F-401s's own, has the lineage the wrong way round.
F-401x: September 1991. The top speed stays at 1/2000; only the long end moves. By this date the maker's name on the paperwork had been Nikon Corporation for three years, though the camera is the same lineage as the 1987 body.

Specifications

Format: 24×36mm on 35mm film
Finder: Fixed eye-level pentaprism, flash housed above it · no rangefinder image
Shutter: electronically controlled vertical-travel metal focal plane · 1s – 1/2000 and B; the F-401x extends the slow end to 30s · flash sync 1/100
Film advance: integral motor, continuous to 2.5 frames a second; motorised loading, advance and rewind
Back: hinged
Meter: TTL three-segment multi-pattern at full aperture; centre-weighted when set to manual exposure. EV 1–19 at ISO 100 with an f/1.4 lens
Motor drive: Not compatible — Integral, and unlike the F-301 and F-501 it rewinds the film as well as advancing it.
Dimensions: 154 × 102 × 65.5 mm
Country: Japan

Nothing numeric is displayed. Akagi Koichi, writing on the F-401X, records that the finder shows a focus confirmation lamp and indicator LEDs and no shutter speed or aperture value at all — the reason, in his account, that there is no pleasure in looking through it.

Where sources disagree

Pre-AI lens mounting

Every Nikon lens made since 1959 will mount, and almost none will meter — Wikipedia, which states that all previous Nikon lenses could be mounted and none supported automatic exposure or TTL metering
Non-AI lenses cannot be mounted at all, the body's slide-type coupling being in the way — the Japanese usage memo at mgnt16

Better supported: That they mount and do not meter

The two cannot both be right and the difference is physical, so it is settleable by anyone holding a pre-AI Nikkor and an F-401. The weight is not even, though. awane-camera's museum page states that the AI coupling lever is omitted from this body — that lever is the part a pre-AI aperture ring fouls on the Nikons where a pre-AI lens genuinely will not go — and Wikipedia says outright that everything mounts. Against those, mgnt16 is one enthusiast's memo of how to work the camera, and the sentence in question runs the mounting claim together with the minimum-aperture warning lever and with G-type lenses, which postdate this body by thirteen years. Left open because no maker's document has been found either way.

What reviewers say

Alan D (Canny Cameras) (blog) — Bought one for £1.50 and calls it an interesting compromise for a canny photographer, but the list of faults is long: a plastic body that weighs as much as a metal Nikkormat once the AA cells are in, a noisy winder and shutter, single-beam autofocus that cannot cope in the dark or with low contrast, and — the one that matters — no metering at all with manual-focus lenses, so an older Nikkor means setting exposure by hand.
赤城耕一 Akagi Koichi (Photo & Culture, Tokyo) (blog) — Writing on the F-401X, he calls it "絶望的にカッコ悪い" — hopelessly ugly, blaming the grip's logo and red stripe and the exposed flash tube — and says the finder shows no shutter speed and no aperture at all, only a focus lamp, so there is no pleasure in looking through it; the credit he gives is to the engineers who kept the F mount working through autofocus, and he notes that a non-CPU manual-focus Nikkor locks the camera out of P, A and S entirely. via machine translation — corrections welcome
Peggy / windswept007 (Camera Go Camera) (blog) — On the F-401s: the AA cells are the best feature because they are available anywhere, and the results justified the bulk — but she gave the camera away rather than keep it, citing the weight with a lens on, a shutter release sensitive enough to fire by accident, and DX-only film speed with no exposure compensation unless you switch to manual.
Hong (The Chens) (blog) — A user's account of the N4004: big and heavy in the hand and loud in operation, and the autofocus hesitates in dim light — the shutter will not release until focus is confirmed — though he rates the response otherwise good and the AA cells long-lived.

History

The F-401 of 1987 looks like a step down from the F-501 and is not. It is a different design decision, taken a year later and carried much further: the aperture is no longer set on the lens. A thumbwheel on the body does it, and to make that work the camera gives up mechanical aperture indexing altogether. Nikon’s whole back catalogue still mounts — the bayonet has not changed since 1959 — but a manual-focus AI or AI-S Nikkor on an F-401 meters nothing at all. On every previous Nikon body an old lens meant a slower way of working. Here it means no automation.

What the camera gains for that is a flash in the roof of the prism, guide number 12, the first built into a Nikon reflex, and a grip deep enough to hold four AA cells rather than the F-501’s AAAs. Film speed comes off the DX code from ISO 25 to 5000, the motor loads, advances at up to 2.5 frames a second and rewinds without being asked, and the shutter runs from 1 second to 1/2000. The metering pattern is not the centre-weighted 60/40 of the F-301 and F-501: Nikon’s own product archive advertises “Advanced AE with unique triple-sensor metering”, awane-camera, mgnt16 and ob-scura all give three-segment multi-pattern, and awane adds that the camera falls back to centre-weighted when the exposure is set manually.

Three bodies carry the name. The F-401 arrived in 1987 and was sold in North America as the N4004; the F-401s of April 1989 (N4004s) brought a better version of the AM200 focusing module the first camera already had; the F-401x of September 1991 (N5005) extended timed exposures to 30 seconds while leaving the top speed alone. Those are the only changes recorded, and none of the three has a published end-of-production date.

One thing that was recorded here has been corrected and one is still open. The metering was wrong: this page carried the centre-weighted 60/40 of the rest of the line, where Nikon’s product archive calls the camera’s metering triple-sensor and the Japanese specification pages agree on three segments, with awane-camera adding the detail that reconciles the two — centre-weighted is what the camera does in manual. The open question is physical. mgnt16 says flatly that a non-AI lens will not go on the body; Wikipedia says everything since 1959 mounts, and awane records that the AI coupling lever is simply absent. Anyone with a pre-AI Nikkor and an F-401 could settle it in a minute.

The gap in the record here is larger than in the rest of this family. Nikon’s Camera Chronicle gives the F-501 and F-301 a joint article explaining the engineering and the market that produced them; it has nothing on the F-401 in any volume. So the module history, the reasoning behind dropping aperture indexing, and the production figures all rest on outside description rather than on the company’s own account.

Which leaves the interesting question unanswerable from the published record: whether abandoning the indexing coupling was a cost decision or a design one. The consequence — that the F-401 is the point where a Nikkor’s aperture ring stopped mattering — is documented. The intention is not.

Expand Collapse

This history is AI-written, from the sources listed at the foot of the page. Where the record is silent it says so rather than filling the gap — but no human wrote these sentences.

Photographs

Nikon F-401 with the AF Nikkor 35–70mm — LoopZilla, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $60 across 17 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $45–$94). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 2 days: unchanged from $60.

By day

Date	Median	Middle half	Listings
2026-09-11	$60	$45–$94	17
2026-09-06	$60	$45–$94	17

Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.

Nikon N4004 F401 Decision Master System Cover 0 — $10.99 · Retro Photo Reading · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 Camera W Nikon AF Nikkor 28-80mm Lense — $14.00 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon N4004 AF SLR 35mm Film Camera Body — $25.00 · Cardinal Camera (Used) · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 (N4004) 35mm Film SLR Camera Body Tested Working, Nikon F Mount — $28.00 · eBay · likely F-401
@ SakuraDo @ Excellent! @ Nikon F-401 Quartz Date 35mm AF/MF SLR Film Camera — $45.00 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon N4004 Top Cover 0 — $49.99 · Retro Photo Reading · likely F-401
[Exc+5] Nikon F-401 Body From JAPAN — $59.99 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon N4004 F401 Mirror Box Unit — $59.99 · Retro Photo Reading · likely F-401
Nikon N5005 Body — $59.99 · Retro Photo Reading · likely F-401X
Nikon N4004 F-401 35mm AF SLR Film Camera Body Only Tested Working(N Mint) Japan — $62.00 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon N5005 F-401x 35mm Film SLR Camera Body AF Built-in Flash Tested Working — $69.00 · eBay · likely F-401X
[Near MINT] Nikon F-401 Film Camera + AF Nikkor 35-70mm f/3.3-4.5 Len From JAPAN — $69.99 · eBay · likely F-401
[NEAR MINT-] Nikon F-401 QD AF w/NIKKOR AF 35-70mm f/3.3-4.5 Lens JAPAN #A91 — $94.49 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon NIKKOR-P Auto 105mm f/2.5 Lens For Nikon F - 401 — $109.99 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon N4004 F401 F-401 35mm SLR film camera + AF Zoom Lens TESTED WORKING — $118.90 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon N4004 / F-401 SLR 35mm Auto Focus Camera Tested w/ 70-300mm AF Zoom Lens — $172.25 · eBay · likely F-401
Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG Contemporary for Nikon F - 401 — $749.99 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon N4004s F401 35mm Film Camera Body Only Untested AS-IS — $29.99 · eBay junk / for parts
Read!![As-Is] Nikon F-401 SLR Film Camera 35mm Body only AF & MF From Japan — $35.99 · eBay · likely F-401 junk / for parts
Nikon F-401 SLR Kamera AF Gehäuse Spiegelreflex — €6.00 · eBay · likely F-401

Show 27 more listings

Nikon F-401 AF AF Quartz Date Käyttöohje #E3 — €6.00 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 Gehäuse — €25.00 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 35mm Spiegelreflexkamera SLR analog AF Autofocus Body (Nikon F) — €39.99 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 AF analoge Spiegelreflexkamera SLR Gehäuse #87 — €54.00 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 AF analoge Spiegelreflexkamera SLR Gehäuse #103 — €54.00 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 AF Spiegelreflexkamera (SLR) mit AF Nikkor 35-70mm schwarz — €59.00 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 Gehäuse Body SLR Kamera Spiegelreflexkamera — €59.25 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 Gehäuse Body SLR Kamera Spiegelreflexkamera — €59.25 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 Gehäuse Body SLR Kamera Spiegelreflexkamera — €59.25 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 SLR Kamera AF Gehäuse Spiegelreflex — €59.90 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 AF SLR Kamera SHP 309908 — €69.00 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 35mm AF Autofocus + Tokina 80-200mm f/4.5 Kit Set Analog SLR 35mm — €74.99 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 35mm AF Autofocus + Vivitar 75-205mm f/3.5-4.5 Kit Set Analog SLR — €74.99 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 35mm AF Autofocus + Nikon 36-72mm f/3.5 Kit Set Analog SLR 35mm — €84.99 · eBay · likely F-401
NIKON F-401 S 35mm film camera nikon slr — €90.00 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon N4004s (F-401s) fotocamera reflex autofocus a pellicola. F401 black body. — €99.99 · eBay
NIKON F-401 S Spiegelreflexkamera DEFEKT Body Gehäuse #8372 R104 — €15.99 · eBay · likely F-401 junk / for parts
Nikon F-401 35mm SLR Film Camera Body Only - Faulty Shutter Parts & Spares Only — £8.12 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 35mm SLR camera body, Good film door catch but won't turn on — £11.99 · eBay · likely F-401
VINTAGE NIKON F-401 35mm CAMERA BODY — £12.94 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 analoge Vintage-Spiegelreflexkamera 35 mm, getestet und funktionsfähig — £15.00 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 - Vintage 35mm SLR Camera Body Only - vgc — £19.99 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 SLR 35mm Film Camera AF Body Only c/w Body Cap — £27.99 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 (N4004) 35mm SLR film camera body 'fully working Film door ' + Case — £31.62 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 Camera and accessories — £73.50 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 35mm Film Camera with AF Nikkor Zoom Lens — £75.58 · eBay · likely F-401
Nikon F-401 35mm SLR Film Camera + AF Nikkor 35-70mm Zoom Lens leather case — £182.70 · eBay · likely F-401

eBay links are affiliate links. If you buy through one, Glass Bodies earns a small commission from eBay at no cost to you. It does not change which listings appear, their prices or their order — those come from the search and the sort described above.

Listings updated 2026-09-11. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.