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

Nikon FE

Nippon Kogaku · Nikon F mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back · 1978

Also known as: ニコンFE · Simple Nikon · Nippon Kogaku Nikon FE

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
FE (first type) Nikon F — — No separate figure published
FE (second type) Nikon F — — No separate figure published
  1. No production total has been published for the FE, and no serial-number list. Nikon's own history of the camera is an engineering memoir about circuit boards and says nothing about quantities.
  2. The FE was the first Nikon to carry a flexible printed circuit populated with chip components rather than leaded ones — the technique that became surface mounting. Nikon treats this, not the automation, as the camera's real contribution.
  3. An abandoned integrated-circuit package designed for the FE, shaped so the photocell sat directly on the chip, was known inside the company as the "boomerang". The idea was dropped here and used on the F3 in 1980.
  4. The recurring complaint in the review literature is not the specification but the display: three independent reviewers say the needle and the shutter-speed scale are hard to read in dim light, and Casual Photophile adds that nothing in the finder reports an exposure compensation dial left off zero.
  5. Richard Haw, who strips these cameras, names the FE's characteristic faults: dirty FRE wafers behind the meter, corroded contacts, decayed light seals and mirror-box problems that need the camera opened a long way. His point is economic — the repair costs more than the body.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • Two needles in the finder — one on the meter, one showing the speed the camera has chosen
  • An A setting on the shutter dial, and an M90 setting beside B that fires mechanically when the cells die
  • The meter coupling lever folds up for pre-AI lenses, as on the FM
  • Eight full seconds at the slow end of the dial, where the FM stops at one

FE (first type):

  • The shutter release is locked by turning a knurled ring around it, as on the early FM

FE (second type):

  • The lock moved to the edge of the winding lever; the ring around the release is fixed and unknurled

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back
Finder
Fixed eye-level pentaprism, interchangeable focusing screens (K standard, B plain matte, E with etched lines); match-needle display with the aperture read directly off the lens. · no rangefinder image
Shutter
vertical-travel metal focal-plane, electronically timed · 8s – 1/1000 and B; stepless on A. M90 (1/90) and B are the only mechanical settings and are the whole of the camera without batteries. · flash sync 1/125 · self-timer
Film advance
single-stroke lever
Back
hinged
Meter
TTL centre-weighted 60/40 at full aperture, silicon photodiode, EV 1–18 at ISO 100 with an f/1.4 lens, ISO 12–4000. Switched on by a light press of the release. Two 1.5V silver-oxide cells or one 3V lithium.
Motor drive
MD-11, MD-12 — 3.5 frames a second, the same drives the FM takes.
Weight
590 g
Dimensions
142 × 89.5 × 57.5 (W × H × D) mm
Country
Japan
Accessories
MD-11 motor drive · MD-12 motor drive · MF-12 data back · SB-10 Speedlight

Where sources disagree

Magnification
  • 0.86× with 93% coverage — Nikon Museum
  • 0.85× with 92% coverage — camera-wiki

A small disagreement, recorded rather than split. No figure is given on Nikon's own Camera Chronicle page for the camera, so neither reading can be checked against the factory.

Speeds
  • 8s to 1/1000 plus B — Wikipedia, Nikon Museum, and camera-wiki's own text
  • 1 to 1/2000s — camera-wiki's specification line

Better supported: 8s to 1/1000

camera-wiki contradicts itself inside one article, giving 1–1/2000 in its specification line and 8s–1/1000 in its prose. Recorded because the higher figure belongs to the FE2 of 1983 and is the commonest way these two cameras get confused.

What reviewers say

History

The Nikon FE went on sale in June 1978, a year after the AI coupling arrived and thirteen months after the FM whose body it borrows. In Japan it was advertised as the “Simple Nikon”. The specification looks unremarkable at this distance — aperture priority, a needle in the finder, eight seconds to 1/1000 — and that is roughly how Nikon presented it at the time.

The interesting part is underneath. Nikon’s own history of the FE is not about photography at all: it is an account of how the camera’s electronics were built. The FE was the company’s first camera to use a flexible printed circuit carrying chip components rather than leaded ones, which is the ancestor of surface mounting, and it was the camera for which an engineer designed an integrated-circuit package with the photocell fixed directly to the chip. That package, called the boomerang for its shape, never shipped. The idea did, on the F3 in 1980.

Against the FM the difference is a single letter on the shutter dial. Set A and the camera chooses a stepless speed; set a number and it holds it electronically. Take the batteries out and what remains is M90 and B — one ninetieth of a second and a manual hold — which is the standing argument for the FM and later for the FM3A. The dial also goes to eight seconds where the FM stops at one, and the finder answers with two needles instead of three LEDs.

Sub-versions are hard to pin down. Nikon says the shutter-lock change made partway through the FM’s life “applies to the Nikon FE (1978) as well” and gives no date for it, which leaves the FE separable into a first and a second type by inspection but not by year. Finder figures are contested at the first decimal: the Nikon Museum says 0.86× and 93%, camera-wiki says 0.85× and 92%, and Nikon’s own Chronicle page gives neither.

No production figure has been published for the FE, and no serial blocks. For a camera that ran five years, spawned the FE2 and supplied half the DNA of the FM3A, the record consists of an engineering memoir about circuit boards and a set of specifications that two reputable sources cannot make agree.

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

Nikon FE
Nikon FE with the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 — E Magnuson, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Nikon FE
Nikon FE, top plate — Heinz-Vale, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Nikon FE
Nikon FE with the MD-12 motor drive and Ai 24mm — Trond Kvitvik, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $330 across 11 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $180–$380). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 2 days: down 13% from $380.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-09-11$330$180–$38011
2026-09-06$380$200–$38013

Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.

eBay links are affiliate links. If you buy through one, Glass Bodies earns a small commission from eBay at no cost to you. It does not change which listings appear, their prices or their order — those come from the search and the sort described above.

Listings updated 2026-09-11. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Related: Nikon FM · Nikon FM2 · Nikon FM3A

Lenses for this body: Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/3.5 · Noct-Nikkor 58mm f/1.2

Sources (10)

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.