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

Nikkormat FT2

Nippon Kogaku · Nikon F mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film · 1975

Also known as: Nippon Kogaku Nikkormat FT-2 · Nikkormat FT-2 · Nikomat FT2 · ニコマートFT2

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Nikkormat FT2 Nikon F 1975–1977 FT2 prefix; no block endpoints published No figure has been published
  1. The published weight is the FT2's oddity: 880g against the FTn's 765g, for a camera whose changes are a hot shoe, a battery of a different chemistry and a locking film speed slider. Both numbers come from the same source, mir.com.my's transcription of the Nikon specifications, and camera-wiki repeats the 880g independently. Nothing published accounts for 115 grams. ImagingPixel prints a third figure, 780g, and Aaron Gold's own weighing — two and a third pounds with a 50mm lens and no strap — points back at the heavier one. See the disputed block.
  2. The marked X sync is 1/125. One camera-wiki contributor reports measuring roughly 1/100 on a shutter tester, which is a single observation on a single body and not a specification.
  3. Two years of production and no total: no figure has been published for the FT2 by Nikon or by anyone else. The FT3 that replaced it in 1977 is documented at 128,000, and the FS and the FTn have estimates attached to them. The FT2 has neither a figure nor a serial block.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • The only pre-AI Nikkormat that runs on a battery still manufactured: one 1.5V silver-oxide S76 or SR44
  • Hot shoe on top of the prism — the visible difference from an FTn across a table
  • Shutter speeds still set on a ring around the lens mount
  • Fixed prism, fixed screen, no motor drive

Nikkormat FT2:

  • A hot shoe moulded into the prism cover, wired internally, with a safety switch
  • One threaded PC terminal on the body where the FTn had separate X and M sockets
  • Plus and minus marks either side of the meter-needle bracket
  • A film-speed slider with a lock, replacing the FTn's unlocked scale
  • Serial prefixed FT2 rather than the FT the earlier two cameras share

Serial-range notes

FT2 prefix
The FT2 leaves the FT block behind and takes a prefix of its own, which makes it the one mechanical Nikkormat that cannot be confused with another by its serial alone. No start number, end number or production quantity has been published, which is unusual only in that the FTn's span has been.

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film
Finder
Fixed eye-level pentaprism; matte Fresnel field with a central split-image rangefinder and microprism collar (Type K) · no rangefinder image
Shutter
Vertical-travel metal focal plane, on the Copal Square pattern · 1s – 1/1000 in full stops and B, mechanical throughout · flash sync Automatic M/X switchover with the speed setting. X at 1/125 to 1 second and B; M and FP at 1/1000 to 1/250, 1/30 to 1 second and B; MF at 1/30 to 1 second and B. Hot shoe with a safety switch, plus a threaded terminal on the body. · self-timer
Film advance
Single-stroke lever, 135° throw with 20° stand-off, which also switches the meter on; crank rewind, additive counter resetting to S
Meter
Through-the-lens at full aperture on a CdS cell, centre-weighted 60/40, coupled to both the diaphragm and the shutter speed ring. EV3 to EV17 at ASA 100, film speeds ASA 12 to 1600, maximum-aperture setting f/1.2 to f/5.6, diaphragm coupling f/1.2 to f/32. Powered by a single 1.5V silver-oxide cell.
Motor drive
Not compatible — None. The AW-1 winder announced with the electronic ELW in 1976 does not fit any mechanical Nikkormat, the FT2 included.
Weight
880 g
Dimensions
148 × 96 × 54 mm
Country
Japan
Original price
$411.50 in the United States in 1975 with the 50mm f/2 (today $2,400), or $503 with the 50mm f/1.4, per Modern Photography as quoted by Mike Eckman. No body-only price has been found in a written source.

Meter needle and shutter speed in the field, as on the FTn, with the plus and minus marks added. A second needle sits on the top plate. Depth-of-field preview on the body, and an independent mirror lock-up control beside it — both carried over from the FTn and both listed in the Nikon specification.

Where sources disagree

Weight (grams)
  • 880g without lens — mir.com.my's transcription of the Nikon specification, repeated independently by camera-wiki
  • 780g body only — ImagingPixel's review, which is within fifteen grams of the FTn's published 765g

Better supported: 880g, weakly. Aaron Gold, who put his own FT2 on a scale with a 50mm lens fitted and no strap or film, reports two and a third pounds — about 1.06kg, which leaves roughly 860g for the body once a 50mm Nikkor is subtracted. That is a measurement rather than a transcription, and it lands on the heavier figure.

The reason to keep the dispute open is that nothing in the design accounts for either number. ImagingPixel gives no source for 780g and no reviewer appears to have noticed that the two figures circulate side by side.

What reviewers say

History

The FT2 is the FTn with four things fixed, and only one of them mattered in 1975. A hot shoe replaced the bare accessory shoe and the cord that had to run from it to one of two PC sockets on the body; the two sockets became one. Plus and minus marks appeared beside the meter needle, so that the direction of the error could be read as well as its size. The film-speed slider got a lock, because the old one moved when it was not meant to. And the advance and self-timer levers, already plastic-tipped since 1973, were reshaped.

The fourth change is the one that decides which of these cameras is worth owning now. Every FS, FT and FTn is calibrated for a 1.35V mercury cell that has not been manufactured legally in most of the world since the early 1990s. Owners work around it with a zinc-air cell, a voltage-dropping adapter, or by ignoring the meter. The FT2 takes a 1.5V silver-oxide S76 or SR44, sold in any supermarket, and its meter is correct on it. A camera can be made obsolete by a battery, and it can be rescued by one.

Everything else is the 1965 camera. The same Copal Square vertical metal shutter, one second to 1/1000 and B, all of it mechanical and none of it dependent on the cell. The same 60/40 centre-weighted CdS meter reading at full aperture through a lens indexed by the shuffle. The same shutter speed ring around the mount, the same fixed prism, the same fixed screen, the same absence of any motor drive. Nikon had by then been selling this body for ten years and changed almost nothing about it.

One published number does not fit. The FTn’s body weight is given as 765g and the FT2’s as 880g, from the same transcription of the same manufacturer’s specifications, for cameras that differ by a shoe and a battery. A hundred and fifteen grams is not a shoe. No source explains the gap, and no source appears to have noticed it.

The rest of the record is thinner still. The FTn has a published serial span and two competing production estimates; the FT3 that followed the FT2 has a figure of 128,000. The FT2 has neither. Its serials begin with an FT2 prefix, which is at least unambiguous, and where that block starts and stops is not on record anywhere this project could find.

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

Nikkormat FT2
Nikkormat FT2 — Halley Pacheco de Oliveira, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Nikkormat FT2
Nikkormat FT2 with the Nikkor 35mm — RobbieIanMorrison, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
Nikkormat FT2
Prague, November 1989 — shot on a Nikkormat FT2 (Robbie Ian Morrison) — RobbieIanMorrison, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $100 across 27 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $65–$150). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 3 days: unchanged from $100.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-09-11$100$65–$15027
2026-09-08$100$65–$15027
2026-09-06$100$65–$15027

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.

Related: Nikkormat FT · Nikkormat FTn

Sources (9)

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.