Another glimpse into my camera collection: the Nikon FM2.

This classic camera has been in my possession since 1987, when I bought it new in the camera shop in Lisburn for £350, my first ‘real’ camera. 

The FM2 was first made in 1984, and was the replacement for the Nikon FM; a mid-range camera aimed at the enthusiast and semi-pro photographer. (The Nikon F3 was the professional’s choice). 

The camera was and still is is a great start in photography. There’s no automatic features on an FM2, – the settings are all manually applied, and so the photographer has to frame the scene, select an appropriate shutter speed and aperture, – and check the meter readings. There’s no exposure compensation, or DX coding – all of that is the responsibility of the photographer. The FM2 slows you down, makes you think about what outcome you want, and adjust the camera to achieve that outcome. And another advantage is the huge range of Nikon F-Mount lenses, and of course the offerings from Sigma and other third party lens manufacturers, all at reasonable prices from auction sites.

The shutter is manual, and made of titanium, for accurate speeds and durability, and it works at speeds of up to 1/4000th of a second. The body is made of metal, and while this makes it a heavy little camera, it feels solid and lasts forever – almost. Mine has developed a fault in the battery chamber, which has rendered the camera’s light meter inoperable, and I’ve been looking around for a while now to find someone willing to fix it. 

Because of this, the camera has lain for around 8 years unused, – but when I lifted it for these photographs  found that there was a film in it, an Ilford Delta HP5 400ISO. I developed the film in Infosol 3, and found this rather grainy image of a hanging basket. Not scenic, but not bad for an 8 year old film!

One interesting piece of history – when Steve McCurry photographed his iconic image of the ‘Afghan Girl,’ it has been reported that he used a Nikon FM2! Why not, – it is a fantastic piece of kit, as iconic as the Afghan Girl image itself. You can still buy them second hand, on auction websites for around £250-£350. There’s no better way to learn photography than to acquire a Nikon FM2, learn from scratch, using film, learn to expose, to frame, to technically operate the camera manually, to develop and print the film. It’s sheer magic!