Glass Bodies a variant-level encyclopedia of vintage lenses and cameras by iwillpat

Nikon F55

Nikon · Nikon F mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film · 2002

our own finding

Also known as: Nikon N55 · Nikon N55 QD · Nikon Us · ニコンUs

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
F55 Nikon F 2002–2006 — No figure published
F55D Nikon F 2002–2006 — No figure published
  1. No production figure has been published for either version, and no serial blocks. Nikon published a monthly production plan for the F75 of 2003 and none for this camera. Roland Vink's serial database has not yet reached the autofocus film bodies.
  2. The F55 is the F65 with five things removed and one substituted. Nikon's own comparison lists them: the body is 10.5mm narrower and 40g lighter, the autofocus drops from five areas to three and from the Multi-CAM900 to the Multi-CAM530, the frame rate falls from about 2.5 to about 1.5 a second, the depth-of-field preview button goes, and no battery pack fits. Rear-curtain sync and the infrared remote go with them; program flash with an external Speedlight arrives in exchange.
  3. It is also the one body in this group that will not drive an AF-S or AF-I lens and will not operate vibration reduction — Nikon says so in the specification. The F65 and F75 do both. An F55 therefore autofocuses only with screw-driven AF Nikkors, which is a narrower list than the mount suggests.
  4. Film speed comes off the DX code from ISO 25 to 5000 and cannot be set by hand; non-DX film is exposed at ISO 100.
  5. Battery life is quoted by Nikon as about 45 rolls of 36 exposures at 20°C without flash, and 27 at −10°C, on two CR2 cells.
  6. Nikon's specification does not name the lens-mount material. Lewis Collard and Gary Seronik both report it as plastic, Seronik calling the camera as plastic as plastic can be, mount included, while adding that he does not expect it to shorten the body's life.
  7. Exposure compensation is ±2 EV, and Nikon states it. Gary Seronik's ±2 stops was for a while the only figure in any written source, since Nikon's archived specification page for the Us gives none; the N55 instruction manual's specification table settles it — "Exposure compensated in ±2 EV range, in 1/2 steps (except in M, AUTO or Programmed Flash)". Seronik was right, and the manual adds the half-step increment and the modes it is locked out of. The same table confirms the rest of what this entry says about the metering and the film speed in Nikon's own words: the Multi-CAM530 module with a detection range of EV −1 to EV 19, three selectable focus areas, five-segment matrix metering over EV 1–20, and film speed "automatically set to ISO film speed of DX-coded film in use (manual not selectable)" from ISO 25 to 5000, with non-DX film exposed at ISO 100.
  8. Neither Lewis Collard nor Nikon's specification mentions an autofocus or auto-exposure lock, and Collard states flatly that there is none of either — a deletion the entry's comparison with the F65 does not otherwise cover.
  9. Mark McMahon reports an example that would not read DX codes at all, leaving him compensating for overexposure by hand on a body with no manual ISO setting. That is one observation of a failure mode rather than a specification, but it is the practical consequence of the DX-only design: when the contacts fail, the camera falls back to ISO 100 and there is no way to tell it otherwise.
  10. camera-wiki records that Nikon issued an advisory about autofocus faults on some examples. The advisory itself was not located, so what was wrong, which serials it covered and what was done about it are all unrecorded here.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • Three focus brackets in the finder, not five — the only Nikon autofocus reflex of this generation with a three-area array, and the quickest way to tell an F55 from an F65 or F75 through the eyepiece
  • An eye-level pentamirror with a B-type clear matte screen, plainer than the screen V fitted to the F65 and F75
  • No depth-of-field preview button, no infrared remote receiver and no rear-curtain sync — three deletions from the F65 that are visible on the body and in the menus
  • A hot shoe wired for sync, ready signal and ground only: there are no TTL flash contacts, so an external Speedlight cannot meter through the lens
  • A sliding minimum-aperture warning lever beside the mount

F55:

  • Plain hinged back with no imprinting window
  • 129 × 92 × 65mm and about 350g — 2.5mm shallower and 10g lighter than the dated body

F55D:

  • Quartz date window in the back; 129 × 92 × 67.5mm and about 360g

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film
Finder
Fixed eye-level pentamirror, B-type clear matte screen with focus frames, dioptre adjustment from −1.5 to +0.8 m⁻¹ · 0.68× magnification · 89% coverage · no rangefinder image
Shutter
electronically controlled vertical-travel metal focal plane · 30s – 1/2000; set automatically in the program and Vari-Program modes, and in half steps by the photographer in S and M. In M there is additionally a Time setting, which is what Nikon calls it in the English manual as well as the Japanese specification · flash sync X only, 1/90 and slower · self-timer
Film advance
integral motor with prewinding load; single frame, or continuous to about 1.5 frames a second in the sports program
Back
hinged, with a film confirmation window; the F55D imprints the date
Meter
TTL at full aperture — 3D five-segment matrix with D- and G-type lenses, five-segment matrix with other AF and Ai-P lenses, and centre-weighted partial metering selected automatically in manual. EV 1–20 at ISO 100 with an f/1.4 lens. CPU coupling only, with no metering at all from a manual-focus Nikkor
Motor drive
Not compatible — Integral, and there is no battery pack: the MB-17 that fits the F65 has no counterpart here. Nikon lists the omission among the differences from the F65.
Weight
360 g
Dimensions
129 × 92 × 67.5 mm
Country
Thailand
Original price
¥50,000 for the body with strap and DK-5 eyepiece cap, ¥75,000 with the AF Zoom-Nikkor 28–80mm f/3.3–5.6G, both excluding tax (Japan, March 2002) (today ¥57,000)
Accessories
DK-5 eyepiece cap, supplied with the camera · Two 3V CR2 lithium cells in the body · CR2025 cell for the quartz date

Magnification runs about 0.68× to 0.60× with a 50mm lens at infinity, depending where the dioptre is set; eyepoint 17mm. Three focus frames are marked, against five on the rest of the line.

Where sources disagree

Production
  • Three focus areas — Nikon's own specification for the Nikon Us, which states フォーカスエリア3点 and names the Multi-CAM530 module
  • Five-point phase-detection autofocus — repeated across secondary descriptions of the F55 and N55

Better supported: Three, on the manufacturer's own specification; Lewis Collard's hands-on account agrees, calling them three tightly packed points

Recorded against the variant because the schema has no field for the number of focus areas. The five-point claim appears to be carried over from the F65 and F75, which do have five and use a different module.

Weight (grams)
  • About 360g — Nikon's own specification for the Us, which describes the dated body
  • 350g for the F55 and 360g for the F55D — English Wikipedia, which separates them

The two agree once the date back is accounted for; Nikon's single figure covers only the Japanese model.

What reviewers say

History

The F55 is the cheapest reflex Nikon made, and it is best understood as a list of subtractions from the F65 of the year before. Nikon published the list itself: 10.5mm narrower, 40 grams lighter, three focus areas instead of five, the Multi-CAM530 module instead of the Multi-CAM900, about 1.5 frames a second instead of 2.5, no depth-of-field preview button, and no battery pack. The infrared remote and rear-curtain sync go too. What comes back the other way is program flash with an external Speedlight, and a lower price: ¥50,000 for the body against ¥61,000.

The three focus brackets are the identifying feature and the most commonly misreported one. Nikon’s own specification for the Japanese Us says three areas and names the module; secondary descriptions repeatedly say five, which is the F65 and F75 figure carried across to the wrong camera. Lewis Collard, writing from the camera rather than from a table, describes three points packed uselessly close together, which is what a three-area array in the middle of a 24×36 frame looks like in practice.

The other restriction matters more today than it did in 2002. The F55 will not autofocus an AF-S or AF-I lens and will not operate vibration reduction — Nikon states both in the specification — where the F65 and F75 will do both. Every Nikon F-mount lens made since 1959 still bolts on; what actually works on this body is the screw-driven AF Nikkor, and nothing above or below it.

Nikon was explicit about why the camera existed. The release of 21 February 2002 puts the film reflex market at about 3.5 million units for the coming year and calls the Us a strategic model for taking share of the entry-level part of it, alongside the Nikon U a rung up. Four years later the camera was discontinued with the rest of Nikon’s film line, and the market it was built to fight for had gone to digital.

Nothing about how many were made survives. No production figure was published for either version, no serial blocks exist, and Vink’s database — the one place Nikon numbering is worked out in public — has still not reached the autofocus film bodies. There is one more gap of a different kind: camera-wiki records that Nikon issued an advisory about autofocus faults on some examples of this camera, and the advisory could not be found. What failed, on which serials, and what the remedy was are not on the public record at all.

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 F55
Nikon F55 with the AF Nikkor 28–80mm — Bertrand Labévue, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Nikon F55
Nikon F55 — Darz Mol, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.5 es)

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $83 across 19 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $37–$99). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 2 days: unchanged from $83.

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2026-09-11$83$37–$9919
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Related: Nikon F65 · Nikon F75 · Nikon F60

Sources (12)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this camera, know a serial number I'm missing, or can see where I have it wrong, tell me — corrections, serials and sample photos are all worth having.