Nikon FA
Nippon Kogaku · Nikon F mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back · 1983
Also known as: Nikon FA Gold · Nikon FA Grand Prix · Nippon Kogaku Nikon FA · ニコンFA
Variants & identification
| Variant | Mount | Years | Serial ranges | Production |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nikon FA | Nikon F | 1983 | 5000001 onward | No figure published; see the serial note for the one number that can be inferred |
| Nikon FA Gold | Nikon F | 1984 | — | No figure published by Nikon |
- No production total has been published for the FA. The only quantity in the record is a lower bound of roughly 351,000 inferred from a single observed serial number, and a guess of "somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million" from the same writer, which he presents as a guess.
- Development of the metering ran from the end of 1977 to the September 1983 release — six years. The first rig was 24 silicon photodiodes of 5mm square, four by six, mounted in place of the film pressure plate of an FE, its output drawn on paper by a pen recorder and compared by hand against bracketed frames from a second FE alongside. Five segments proved enough.
- The FA and the Olympus OM-4 arrived in the same year with opposite answers to the same problem — matrix metering removing the photographer's judgement, multi-spot metering accepting as much of it as possible. Nikon's own account says the two ran neck and neck for the first Camera Grand Prix and that the FA won by a very slim margin.
- The $646 figure is a list price, and American SLRs of the period did not sell at list. Wikipedia puts the usual discount at 30–40% and observes that even so the FA's street price ran barely 10% under the professional F3HP; Mike Eckman gives roughly $475 as the actual December 1983 street price. Jim Grey reads the same overlap as the reason the FA sold as poorly as it did.
- After the film is loaded the FA fires its blank frames at a fixed 1/250 rather than at a metered speed — reported by Jim Grey, who counts the wasted frames against the camera.
- The finder readout is a liquid-crystal panel, not an array of LEDs. This entry said LED when it was first written and had no source for it. English Wikipedia calls the display "a digital liquid crystal display (LCD) information panel at the top left of the viewfinder" and adds that it "could not be illuminated in low ambient light situations"; Mike Eckman calls it the early adoption of an LCD that is not backlit, and draws the contrast explicitly against Canon, who "used bright red LEDs for their digital display in the A1". James Madison's review calls the FA's display an LED one in passing, but he is describing the distraction rather than the technology, and no source that examines the display agrees with him. A readout whose defining complaint is that it cannot be lit is an LCD; an LED display emits its own light and the complaint would make no sense.
- The FA's reputation for reliability is contested among people who own them. Josh Solomon reports that his own body died without warning and that FAs are known for it, with fewer working survivors than other Nikon SLRs of the period; James Madison reports no reliability trouble at all and calls the camera relatively foolproof. Both are single owners' experience, and no failure-rate evidence exists either way.
How to tell them apart
- The first camera of any make to meter in multiple segments of the frame
- Titanium-bladed vertical shutter to 1/4000 with a 1/250 flash sync
- Programmed and shutter-priority automation, which no earlier Nikon body offered
Nikon FA:
- Four exposure modes on the dial: P, P HI, S, A, plus manual
- A metering selector between matrix and centre-weighted — the first such switch on any camera
- No AE lock, and no manual shutter speed slower than one second
Nikon FA Gold:
- Top and bottom covers gold-plated in place of the chrome
- Lizard skin in place of the body covering
- Supplied with an AI Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 whose barrel coupling ring is gold-plated, and whose lens cap carries a gold-plated Nikon logotype
- Nikon FA: Sold in a chrome-topped finish and in all black. The starting serial number 5000001 is reported by Mike Eckman from observation rather than from a factory list.
- Nikon FA Gold: Sold in Japan only, in a paulownia-wood box, at ¥500,000. Nikon's own account calls it a limited edition and gives no quantity; it also records that the company had gold-plated cameras before as commemorative gifts to dealers, and that the FA Gold was the first gold-plated Nikon offered for sale. Made to mark the FA winning the first Camera Grand Prix.
Serial-range notes
- 5000001 onward
- Mike Eckman reports the FA as starting at 5000001 and gives a camera in his own collection numbered 53509xx, from which at least about 351,000 bodies must have been numbered. That is a floor drawn from one observed camera against one reported starting number, not a production figure, and Nikon has published neither.
Specifications
- Format
- 24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back
- Finder
- Fixed eye-level pentaprism, interchangeable focusing screens · no rangefinder image
- Shutter
- Titanium, vertical travel, focal plane; electronically timed with a mechanical fallback · 1s – 1/4000 and B; no manual speed longer than one second; M250 (mechanical 1/250) and B without batteries · flash sync 1/250 · self-timer
- Film advance
- Single-stroke lever
- Back
- Hinged; interchangeable for the MF-16 data back
- Meter
- Automatic Multi-Pattern metering — two segmented silicon photodiodes dividing the frame into five areas, the output weighed against an algorithm built from thousands of test rolls — switchable to conventional 60/40 centre-weighted. Off-the-film TTL flash metering. There is no AE lock: the instant stop-down method the camera meters by made one awkward, and Nikon left it out on the argument that matrix metering removed the need.
- Motor drive
- MD-15, MD-12 — The MD-15 is the FA's own drive; the MD-12 fits with limitations.
- Weight
- 625 g
- Dimensions
- 142.5 × 92 × 64.5 mm
- Country
- Japan
- Original price
- $646 for the chrome body alone in the United States; the FA Gold ¥500,000 in Japan (today $2,030)
- Accessories
- Motor Drive MD-15 · Motor Drive MD-12 · Data Back MF-16 · Interchangeable focusing screens · Speedlight SB-15, SB-16, SB-16B
Liquid-crystal readout of shutter speed and aperture at the top left of the finder. It cannot be illuminated, and reviewers who use the camera in low light say so. Nikon omitted the aperture direct-readout window that the FE carried. Three focusing screens were offered, which James Madison contrasts with the wider choice on other Nikon bodies.
Where sources disagree
- Last
- Manufactured 1983–1987, then sold from dealer stock until circa 1989 (Wikipedia)
- In production from 1983 through 1989 (mir.com.my)
- In production until early 1988, then sold from new dealer stock for another year and a half (Mike Eckman)
Better supported: 1987, with stock selling through to about 1989
Two of the three accounts agree that the camera was still on dealers' shelves at the end of the 1980s and disagree only about when the line stopped. Nikon's own product history gives the year of release and nothing else. Josh Solomon and James Madison both give 1983–1987 for manufacture, which sides with the first reading.
What reviewers say
- Josh Solomon (Casual Photophile) (blog) — Calls it one of the easiest and most purely fun cameras he has shot and says it delivered incredible results — then reports that his own body died without warning, says FAs are known for dying unexpectedly, and blames the plastic cladding and the quantity of electronics for the thin population of working survivors.
- Mike Eckman (mikeeckman.com) (blog) — Rates it 11.0 out of 15 and his favourite Nikon, calling it the most advanced manual-focus camera the company ever made for the balance of full manual control with program exposure, the 1/4000 titanium shutter and matrix metering; his one real complaint is that the finder display is not backlit and is extremely hard to read in anything but bright light.
- Jim Grey (Down the Road) (blog) — Praises the build — hardened gears, ball-bearing joints, a winder that glides on silk and a surprisingly gentle mirror — and says matrix metering is a thing no FM2 will do; against it he sets an advance lever that pokes him in the forehead when shooting vertically, a shutter button he cannot find without looking, and the frames the camera wastes at a fixed 1/250 after loading.
- James Madison (Fstoppers) (blog) — Calls it his favourite budget 35mm body and says the matrix metering is still unrivalled and works even with manual lenses; complains that the data display in the finder distracts, that only three focusing screens were offered against a wider choice elsewhere, and that the front grip is fragile and often missing on used bodies.
History
The Nikon FA was meant to be the FE2. Nikon’s own Camera Chronicle sets out the sequence: a successor to the FE was to receive matrix metering and multi-mode automation; the additions carried it out of the FE’s price class and forced compromises that took it out of the FE’s character; so it was released in September 1983 under a new letter, and a plainer FE2 went out six months ahead of it.
What justified the new letter was the meter. Two project teams were started at the end of 1977, one on a high-speed shutter and one on this. The metering team began by mounting twenty-four silicon photodiodes, each 5mm square, four rows by six, in place of the film pressure plate of an FE, feeding their outputs through the FE’s own metering circuit to a pen recorder. Photographs were taken with that rig and with an ordinary bracketing FE side by side, and thousands of rolls of film were compared frame by frame against the paper traces until an algorithm emerged. Two conclusions came out of it: overall subject brightness belonged in the calculation, and five segments were enough. Six years after the team was formed, the FA shipped with two segmented photodiodes dividing the frame into five.
The stated purpose was not accuracy in the abstract. Nikon’s engineers put it as a problem of who is being served — an experienced photographer meets the last few percent of failures with exposure compensation or an AE lock, and everyone else does not. Making those controls unnecessary was the object. The FA duly has no AE lock at all: the instant stop-down method it meters by would have made one complicated, and Nikon dropped it. The same method limits the metering circuit at long exposures, so no manual speed slower than one second is offered on a camera that will time eight in automatic modes. These are not oversights but the price of the design, and Nikon says so.
The rest of the specification followed from the FM2 team: titanium blades, vertical travel, 1/4000, converted here to electronic timing with the flash synchronising at 1/250. Programmed and shutter-priority automation need the body to set the aperture, which is why the standardized AI-S coupling exists; with a plain AI lens the FA is an aperture-priority and manual camera.
The FA took the first Camera Grand Prix, against an Olympus OM-4 that had answered the same question by the opposite method, and Nikon marked it with the FA Gold — gold-plated covers, lizard skin, a paulownia box and a gold-plated 50mm f/1.4, ¥500,000, sold in Japan. Nikon records that gold-plated cameras had been made before as gifts to dealers and that this was the first offered for sale. It does not say how many were made.
Nor does it say how many FAs were made. The only quantity in the whole record is a floor: a starting serial of 5000001 and a camera numbered 53509xx, both reported by Mike Eckman, which put at least about 351,000 bodies through the numbering. When the line stopped is disputed three ways, between 1987, early 1988 and 1989, with the accounts agreeing only that stock was still selling at the end of the decade. For the camera that changed how every meter since has worked, that is a thin file.
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 $30 across 6 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $25–$200). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 2 days: unchanged from $30.
By day
| Date | Median | Middle half | Listings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-11 | $30 | $25–$200 | 6 |
| 2026-09-06 | $30 | $25–$200 | 6 |
Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.
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