I thought I might do an occasional post to illustrate some of the cameras in my collection, and here’s my old Nikon FG20

This classic film SLR came to be in my possession around ten years ago, when a friend who ran a charity shop asked me to drop in and look at a box full of ‘junk’ that someone had left in. The ‘junk’ turned out to be a collection of film cameras, lenses and accessories – obviously found in someone’s attic, the prized possessions of a deceased relative. They were ‘junk’, just because, well. “Who uses film these days?” Well, I do! So I rescued this camera, and another one, and gave the charity shop £20 donation.

I doubted if the FG20 would work, but when I got it home, I loaded a film and to my surprise it worked fine. Not 100% though. I found out that the lever which advances the film was, on return, catching the shutter speed dial, and moving the shutter speed as well as the film. That was a pain, – the shutter speed has to be reset after each exposure, and my memory doesn’t always work that well!

There was a remedy though. Unlike the Nikon FM2, – my very first ‘decent’ camera, the FG20 has a semi-automatic setting. It will allow shooting on aperture priority, and this preference is selected by rotating the shutter speed dial to ‘A,’ the effect of which is that the film advance lever can’t move the dial any further. Problem solved.

In case you’re wondering, the little green symbol beside the ‘A’ is a sound setting. The camera will warn if the selected aperture leads to over or under exposure or camera shake.

The FG20 was built in 1984, so mine could be almost 40 years old, and was a successor to the earlier FG camera. It was very much on the cheap end of Nikon SLR’s, selling at around £150 new at its launch (probably think of £500 in 2023). It was aimed at beginners and students, and its real purpose was to get the owner invested in the extensive Nikon F series lenses, which would perhaps someday lead to a more expensive body purchase.

This deliberate targeting of novices is evident, for the camera has no exposure compensation to mitigate its automatic selection of shutter speeds, for example in snow, or on a beach in bright sunlight (not much chance of that here though!) The build quality too is somewhat ‘cheaper’ than for example, the FM2, which was of metal construction, – contrast the FG20’s ‘polycarbonate’ cladding on a metal frame.

Having said that, this is a great camera. I’ve used it for black and white shooting, it’s small and neat – great for street photography, when you don’t want a huge obtrusive body and lens. It’s durable, – still shooting fine after all these years, – despite its own idiosyncrasies, and I still carry it in the car. Present value? they sell on eBay for around £100-300 depending on condition. You could do a lot worse!