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

Nikkormat FTn

Nippon Kogaku · Nikon F mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film · 1967

our own finding

Also known as: Nippon Kogaku Nikkormat FTn · Nikkormat FTN · Nikomat FTn · ニコマートFTn

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
First type Nikon F 1967–1969 FT 3500001 – approximately FT 367xxxx No separate figure published
Later production Nikon F 1969–1975 Approximately FT 367xxxx – FT 4700001 No separate figure published
  1. Nikon's product codes distinguish the four catalogued bodies: 100-27-001 chrome, 100-27-041 black, 100-27-002 chrome with the split-image screen, 100-27-042 black with the split-image screen.
  2. The body is assembled from 685 separate parts, a figure Nikon published and which collector sites have repeated since.
  3. Every FTn takes the 1.35V mercury cell that is no longer manufactured. The FT2 of 1975 is the same camera recalibrated for silver oxide, which is the practical reason an FT2 is the more usable body today.
  4. The shuffle has a starting position that the manuals assume and the shorthand accounts leave out: the lens aperture ring goes to f/5.6 before the lens is mounted, and only then is it swung to minimum and back. Hamish Gill sets this out as the step that catches people.
  5. There is no accessory shoe on the body. A clip-on shoe fitting around the rewind knob was supplied for flash, and the FTn's own M and X terminals are on the front — Jim Grey and The Noisy Shutter both note that a flash needs the accessory before it can be mounted.
  6. Mirror lock-up on the FTn does not consume a frame, which it does on the Nikon F — The Noisy Shutter records this as a point where the cheaper camera is the better one.
  7. Relative production, from Mike Eckman's FT3 review: roughly eight times as many FTns were built as FT3s. Set against the 128,000 that circulates for the FT3, that puts the FTn near a million and so leans towards the higher of the two disputed totals below — but it is a ratio quoted without a source, resting on a figure also quoted without a source, and it settles nothing.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • A capital N inscribed on the top plate beside the meter window and the rewind knob. The serial number still begins FT, exactly as on the earlier camera, so the N is the only quick way to tell an FTn from an FT
  • The shutter speed in use is visible in the finder, lit by light coming through the lens, with the adjacent speeds tinted yellow — the FT showed nothing
  • Shutter speeds set on a ring around the lens mount, as on every Nikkormat
  • Available in satin chrome or black
  • Fixed prism, fixed screen, no motor drive: the three things that separate a Nikkormat from a Nikon F

First type:

  • Shutter release threaded for a cable only, with no collar for the Nikon F release accessories
  • Type J screen: a plain central microprism, no split-image wedge
  • Bare metal film-advance and self-timer levers

Later production:

  • A threaded collar around the shutter release, taking the Nikon F accessories including the AR-1 soft release
  • Black plastic caps on the film-advance and self-timer levers from about 1973, matching the Nikon F2 of 1971
  • Type A screen, with a split-image wedge, in place of the Type J; Type K from 1974 or 1975

Serial-range notes

FT 3500001 – FT 4700001
The published span of the FTn, and the only Nikkormat serial block anyone has put endpoints on. It is 1,200,000 numbers wide, which is larger than either figure published for the camera's production. A span is not a count: either the block was not filled, or one of the totals is wrong, and no manufacturer list exists to settle it.
approximately FT 367xxxx
About halfway through this block the shutter release was redesigned to take the Nikon F release accessories. Before it, only a cable threaded into the button itself, as on the FS and FT.

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film
Finder
Fixed eye-level pentaprism with a fixed matte/Fresnel screen and central microprism · 92% coverage · no rangefinder image
Shutter
Vertical-travel metal focal plane, on the Copal Square pattern · 1s – 1/1000 and B, mechanical throughout, with intermediate settings usable between 1/250 and 1/1000 · flash sync X at 1/125 or slower, on separate X and M terminals; FP and MF bulbs also usable · self-timer
Film advance
Single-stroke lever, 135° throw with 26° stand-off, which also switches the meter on
Meter
Through-the-lens at full aperture on a CdS cell, centre-weighted 60/40 — sixty percent of the reading taken from the 12mm circle at the middle of the screen. 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 one 1.3V mercury cell, which is no longer made.
Motor drive
Not compatible — None, as on every mechanical Nikkormat. The AW-1 winder of 1976 fits the electronic ELW and EL2 only.
Weight
765 g
Dimensions
148 × 95 × 54 mm
Country
Japan
Original price
No United States or Japanese list price for the FTn has been found in a written source. Wallace Heaton in London was asking £176 9s 6d with the 50mm f/2 in 1970, which the collector recording it sets against a weekly wage of £18.

Carries the meter needle and the shutter speed. Depth-of-field preview is on the body.

Where sources disagree

Production
  • Over one million, and the best seller of the whole Nikomat/Nikkormat line — Mike Eckman
  • Approximately 850,000 — base2photo

The published serial span, FT 3500001 to FT 4700001, is 1,200,000 numbers wide and so contradicts neither figure while confirming neither. Nikon has published nothing.

Last
  • 1975 — English Wikipedia, mir.com.my and base2photo; the FT2 was introduced in March 1975
  • 1976 — camera-wiki.org

Introduction of a successor is not discontinuation of its predecessor, and the two cameras may simply have overlapped on the line.

What reviewers say

History

The FT’s fault was a small one, repeated every time a lens came off. Its meter could not know how fast the lens on the front was, so the photographer told it, by hand, on a ring around the mount. Forget, and the exposure is wrong by however many stops the two lenses differ. The FTn, from October 1967, fixed that with a movement rather than a mechanism: mount the lens, then swing the aperture ring to its minimum and back to its maximum, and the camera reads the travel and sets itself. Collectors call it the Nikon shuffle. Nikon’s own histories call it click-click. It is semi-automatic indexing, and it is the reason the FT lasted two years and the FTn lasted eight.

The other change was the metering pattern. The FT averaged the whole frame; the FTn takes sixty percent of its reading from a 12mm circle in the middle of the screen and forty percent from everything else. The same year, the Nikon F’s Photomic Tn finder did the same thing. That pattern outlived the mount it was designed for and remained the Nikon default into the digital cameras.

Both changes are small enough to leave the camera unaltered from outside, which creates the field problem the FTn is known for. The serial number still begins with the letters FT, because the numbering simply continued from the earlier camera. What marks an FTn is a single capital N stamped on the top plate beside the meter window. Bodies advertised as the rarer FT are very often FTns whose seller read the prefix and stopped.

Inside the eight-year run, four changes are documented and none of them is dated precisely. Around 1969 the shutter release gained a threaded collar for the Nikon F release accessories, and the diaphragm coupling was extended to f/32. Around 1972 the mirror box was redesigned. In 1973 the advance and self-timer levers received the black plastic tips the Nikon F2 had introduced in 1971. And the focusing screen moved from the plain microprism Type J to the split-image Type A and then to the combined Type K — except that it did not move cleanly: a body numbered FT 4657801 left the factory with a Type K while a higher-numbered 1974 camera has a Type J, so the screen was ordered rather than dated.

What the record does not contain is a production figure anyone can defend. The serial block is published as FT 3500001 to FT 4700001, which is 1,200,000 numbers. One collector source says approximately 850,000 cameras; another says over a million. The span is consistent with both and proves neither, since nothing establishes that the block was filled, and Nikon has never published a total for any Nikkormat. Nor is the end date settled: the FT2 arrived in March 1975, most sources close the FTn there, and camera-wiki carries it to 1976. The two cameras may have shared a line for a year. Nobody has published the line.

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 FTn
Nikomat FTN with the 50mm f/1.4 — E Magnuson, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
Nikkormat FTn
Urquhart Castle and Loch Ness — shot on a Nikkormat FTn (Mike McBey) — Mike McBey, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $85 across 42 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $56–$130). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 2 days: unchanged from $85.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-09-11$85$56–$13042
2026-09-06$85$56–$13042

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 FS · Nikkormat FT · Nikkormat FT2

Lenses for this body: GN Auto Nikkor 45mm f/2.8 · Nikkor 28mm f/2 · Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 (F mount) · Nikkor 50mm f/2 (F mount) · Nikkor 55mm f/1.2 · Nikkor 85mm f/1.8

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.