Nikkormat FT
Nippon Kogaku · Nikon F mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film · 1965
Also known as: Nippon Kogaku Nikkormat FT · Nikomat FT · ニコマートFT · Nikkormat FS · ニコマートFS
Variants & identification
| Variant | Mount | Years | Serial ranges | Production |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nikkormat FT | Nikon F | 1965–1967 | — | About 100,000 in two years, on an outside estimate; no factory figure has been published |
| Nikkormat FS | Nikon F | 1965–1967 | — | Roughly 25,000, offered as a belief rather than a record |
- Every production figure for the FT and the FS is an outside estimate. base2photo puts the FT at about 100,000 in two years and the FS at roughly 25,000; Mike Eckman, giving the FT3 a total of 128,000, describes that as nearly identical to the FT's over a comparable run. Nikon has published neither number, and the two estimates for the FT are 28% apart.
- The FS is not a separate camera. It is the FT without its meter and without its mirror lock-up, sold from the same month, at the same counters, in the same body.
- Reviewers have a name for the maximum-aperture indexing dance the FT and the FTn require on every lens change: JR Smith calls it "the Nikon Shuffle", complicated at first and routine afterwards. Julian Tanase reports the practical consequence of not knowing about it — the meter simply appears dead.
- The commonest failure on surviving FT bodies is not the CdS cell but the resistor ring that feeds it. Random Camera Blog reports that a deteriorated ring gives a jumpy needle and erratic readings, which is what a shopper is most likely to meet on a camera now sixty years old.
How to tell them apart
- Shutter speeds are set on a ring around the lens mount, not a top-plate dial — the single feature that identifies a Nikkormat across a room
- A flat-topped pentaprism cover rather than the Nikon F's peak: a young designer chose the shape to keep the cheaper camera visually distinct from the professional one, against pressure to make the two look alike
- Film speed is set on a scale concentric with that same ring
- The serial number is prefixed FT, with no capital N beside it; the N marks an FTn
- Fixed prism and fixed focusing screen — neither comes off, which is most of what separates a Nikkormat from a Nikon F
Nikkormat FT:
- A meter cell window on the front of the prism housing, and a meter needle repeated on the top plate so the reading can be taken without the eye at the finder
- The maximum aperture of the lens must be set by hand on the ring around the mount before the meter reads correctly
- Mirror lock-up fitted
- Meter needle brackets without + and − marks: the FT2 adds them
Nikkormat FS:
- No meter: no cell window on the prism front, no needle on the top plate, no film-speed scale on the mount ring
- No mirror lock-up — the only Nikkormat without one
- Earliest bodies have the frame-counter window flush with the top plate, where the advance lever scratches it; later bodies add a raised ring around the window
- Nikkormat FT: The metered camera, and the one that sold. Nikon describes the meter as a convertible arrangement — it will read at full aperture, coupled through the lens's meter prong, or stopped down — which is how a body designed around an external cell came to carry two metering methods at once.
- Nikkormat FS: Released the same month as the FT and outsold by it at once. The FS was the camera the line was originally designed to be, before TTL metering was added late; sold without a meter it had no answer to the Pentax SP, and it was not replaced when the FT became the FTn in 1967. Neither of the two frame-counter types appears to be the rarer.
Serial-range notes
- FT prefix, below FT 3500001
- The FTn's numbering is published as starting at FT 3500001 and as running on continuously from the FT's, which places the FT and the FS together in the block beneath it. No start number has been published for the FT, and no manufacturer serial list exists publicly for any Nikkormat, so a body cannot be dated from its number the way a Nikon F can.
Specifications
- Format
- 24×36mm on 35mm film
- Finder
- Fixed eye-level pentaprism with a fixed screen — a 4mm microprism in a 12mm matte field · no rangefinder image
- Shutter
- Vertical-travel metal focal plane, on the Copal Square pattern · 1s – 1/1000 and B, mechanical throughout; the battery runs the meter and nothing else · flash sync X at 1/125 or slower, on separate X and M terminals; the shoe is an accessory shoe with no contact
- Film advance
- Single-stroke lever, which also switches the meter on
- Meter
- Through-the-lens, averaged across the whole frame, on a CdS cell, powered by one 1.3V mercury cell. Centre-the-needle, coupled to both the aperture and the shutter speed ring, and usable either at full aperture or stopped down. The maximum aperture is set by hand.
- Motor drive
- Not compatible — No Nikkormat accepts a motor drive, and the mechanical F-series bodies take no winder either — the AW-1 winder arrives in 1976 on the electronic ELW. This, the fixed prism and the fixed screen are the three things a Nikon F has and a Nikkormat does not.
- Weight
- 745 g
- Dimensions
- 146 × 95 × 54 mm
- Country
- Japan
- Original price
- $183 for the FT body in the United States in 1965 (today $1,820), against $113 for the FS — the entire difference being the meter. Mike Eckman gives $279.50 for the FT with the 50mm f/2. In Japan the FT was ¥54,500 with the 50mm f/1.4 and the FS ¥37,800.
The meter needle is the only thing in the finder. Shutter speed is not shown; that arrives with the FTn.
Where sources disagree
- Last
- 1967 — base2photo, which adds that old stock kept the FS on dealers' shelves for several years afterward
- 1971 — English Wikipedia
The gap can be read as manufacture against availability, but neither source says which of the two it is reporting.
- Production
- About 100,000 between 1965 and 1967 — base2photo
- Nearly identical to the FT3's 128,000 — Mike Eckman, comparing two short runs rather than stating a figure for the FT itself
Neither is sourced to Nikon, and the second is an aside in an entry about a different camera.
What reviewers say
- Julian Tanase (35mmc) (blog) — Rates it a sturdy vintage tool and singles out the smoothness of the film advance and the crispness of the shutter, while calling it one of the heftiest cameras he handles; his one real complaint is the maximum-aperture indexing, which he did not know about when he got the camera and which left the meter, in his words, dead-like.
- Josh Solomon (Casual Photophile) (blog) — Judges the 1965 FT and FS incredibly well made and well designed, and the cheapest way into professional Nikkor glass at the time — but says the same bodies were heavy, bulky and unfriendly to beginners, and that this is what cost the Nikkormat line its market once the 1970s turned towards small amateur SLRs.
- JR Smith (Fogdog Photography) (blog) — Calls the Nikkormat the Toyota Land Cruiser of cameras and praises the fit and finish, the Copal Square shutter, the large frame counter and the bright split-image finder; calls putting the ASA and shutter-speed controls on the lens mount a weird ergonomic quirk, and names the FT's indexing routine "the Nikon Shuffle".
- mfophotos (Random Camera Blog) (blog) — Recommends the Nikkormats as solidly built and reliable bargains but warns that the resistor ring feeding the meter deteriorates with age, so a jumpy needle and erratic readings are the usual fault on a body this old; notes the FS is met less often than any other Nikkormat and has become a collectible.
History
The Nikkormat was designed without a meter. Nikon’s own account of it is unusually frank: in early 1965 the camera existed as a cheaper F-mount body with a coupled external cell, and a meeting of camera-division management in Tokyo had to decide whether to tear that up. Topcon had shipped through-the-lens metering in 1963 and Pentax in 1964. The decision went to TTL, the die-cast moulds were recut, and the camera reached the market in July 1965 — four or five months later, with, by Nikon’s telling, the first batches leaving the factory before the change had fully caught up with them.
What shipped that month was two cameras. The FT has the meter; the FS is the same body without it and without the mirror lock-up, and it is the camera the line was originally meant to be. The FS cost $113 in the United States and the FT $183 — a 62% premium for a cadmium-sulphide cell and a needle — and the market took the FT without hesitating. Roughly 25,000 FS bodies are believed to have been built against something like 100,000 FTs, and when the FT was replaced in 1967 the FS was not replaced at all.
The design decisions that make a Nikkormat recognisable are all subtractions from a Nikon F. The prism does not come off. The screen does not come off. There is no motor drive, and there would never be one on any mechanical Nikkormat. In exchange the meter moved inside the camera for the first time in Nikon’s history, and it had to be read somewhere: the needle appears in the finder and again on the top plate, so the exposure can be set with the camera held at the waist. The shutter speeds went onto a ring around the lens mount, where a hand already holding the aperture ring can reach them without the eye leaving the finder — which is either the cleverest thing about the camera or the most annoying, depending on which review is being read, and reviewers have never settled it.
One more subtraction is the thing the FT is most often criticised for. The lens’s maximum aperture has to be dialled in by hand on the mount ring every time a lens is changed, or the meter is simply wrong. The FTn’s semi-automatic indexing two years later exists to fix exactly this, and it is the reason the FT had the shortest life of any mechanical Nikkormat.
Nikon has published no production figure and no serial list for any of these cameras. The FTn’s numbering is documented as starting at FT 3500001 and continuing the FT’s sequence, which is the only fixed point available: everything below that number is an FT or an FS, and nothing distinguishes where one block ends. The two estimates in circulation for the FT — about 100,000, or something near the FT3’s 128,000 — are 28% apart, both from collectors rather than the factory, and there is no evidence in the public record that would decide between them.
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
Live listings
Asking price, USD: a median of $96 across 16 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $55–$180). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 2 days: unchanged from $96.
By day
| Date | Median | Middle half | Listings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-11 | $96 | $55–$180 | 16 |
| 2026-09-06 | $96 | $55–$180 | 16 |
Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.
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Listings updated 2026-09-11. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.