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

Nikon FM

Nippon Kogaku · Nikon F mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back · 1977

Also known as: ニコンFM · Nippon Kogaku Nikon FM

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
FM (first type) Nikon F 1977–1979 — No separate figure published
FM (second type) Nikon F 1979–1982 — No separate figure published
  1. No production total has been published for the FM. Nikon's own history of the camera discusses its mirror box, its shutter unit and the package its metering chip came in without ever counting the bodies, and none of the standard references supplies a figure.
  2. No serial-number list has been published either. Roland Vink's database, which carries serial blocks and production quantities for Nikon lenses and for the digital bodies, states on its camera page that the manual-focus film cameras are still to be added.
  3. Because both admitted design changes are undated at the factory, an FM cannot be placed in time more precisely than "first type" or "second type" from the camera itself.
  4. Norbert Michalke reports that the FM's mechanism was designed to run almost free of oil and grease and is rated for −30 °C to +40 °C, and that the meter settles within 1/25 of a second. Nikon's own account of the camera does not give a temperature range.
  5. Reviewers converge on the same two limits. Josh Solomon calls the 1/1000 top speed decidedly average and the 1/125 sync commonplace even for 1977; Paul Burrows makes the 1/1000 the FM's main disadvantage against the FM2's 1/4000. Neither treats it as a fault, only as the boundary of what the camera is.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • Fully mechanical — every speed from 1s to 1/1000 fires with the batteries out
  • Three LEDs (+ ● −) down the right of the finder, not a needle: the FE answers with a needle
  • The meter coupling lever folds up, so pre-AI lenses mount and meter stopped down — the FM2 will not do this
  • Shutter dial, rewind knob and prism sit on a body a full generation smaller than a Nikkormat

FM (first type):

  • The shutter release is locked by turning a knurled ring around it
  • A knurled ring around the rewind knob

FM (second type):

  • The lock moved to the edge of the winding lever; the ring around the release is fixed and unknurled
  • No knurled ring on the rewind knob

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back
Finder
Fixed eye-level pentaprism; non-interchangeable K screen with a 3mm split-image centre and a 1mm microprism collar. Shutter speeds down the left, meter LEDs down the right. · 0.86× magnification · 93% coverage · no rangefinder image
Shutter
Copal CCS-M square unit, vertical travel, metal blades, mechanical · 1s – 1/1000 and B, mechanical throughout · flash sync 1/125, marked in red on the dial · self-timer
Film advance
single-stroke lever
Back
hinged
Meter
TTL centre-weighted 60/40 at full aperture, read on a 12mm circle; three LEDs (+ ● −), the centre dot claimed good to a fifth of a stop. ISO 12–3200, EV 1–18 at ISO 100 with an f/1.4 lens. Two 1.5V silver-oxide cells or one 3V lithium — for the meter only.
Motor drive
MD-11, MD-12 — 3.5 frames a second. The MD-11 has no automatic power-off and will flatten its cells if left switched on; the MD-12 that replaced it sleeps.
Weight
590 g
Dimensions
142 × 89.5 × 60.5 (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

Meter
  • GPD, gallium arsenide phosphide photodiode — Nikon, Camera Chronicle Part 10, which names the FM's cell in passing while explaining the FE's: "a SPD (silicon photodiode) as the photodetector for the EL2 and the F2 Photomic SB, and a GPD (gallium arsenide phosphide photodiode) for the FM"
  • SPD, silicon photodiode — Nikon's own product-history page for 1977, which sums the camera up as "Manual exposure SPD meter with precise LED display"

Better supported: GPD

Both sources are Nikon's, and a third Nikon document breaks the tie: the specification printed in the FM's own instruction manual, transcribed at mir.com.my, reads "two gallium photo-diodes" — the same page whose 590g and 142 × 89.5 × 60.5mm this entry carries. The Chronicle passage is specific and comparative, naming three cameras and two cell types; the product-history line is a one-clause caption. camera-wiki and Wikipedia both read gallium arsenide phosphide, and so do two reviewers writing independently — Paul Burrows names gallium arsenide phosphide cells, and Norbert Michalke names gallium photodiodes and explains them as the gain in speed and sensitivity over the cadmium sulphide of the Nikkormats. Nothing in print reads with the product-history page except the product-history page.

What reviewers say

History

The Nikon FM went on sale in May 1977, and Nikon’s own account of it is unusually candid about why it exists. Overseas distributors, principally in the United States, had asked for a camera a step below the F2; the market was moving towards smaller SLRs; the company needed a body in which to introduce the new AI aperture coupling. The FM is the answer to a request, not a manifesto.

Mechanically it is a Copal CCS-M square shutter, vertical travel, metal blades, one second to 1/1000, and no electricity anywhere in the exposure chain. The batteries run the meter and nothing else. Above the shutter sits a fixed pentaprism with a 93% screen, and beside it a meter that reports with three LEDs — plus, dot, minus — rather than the swinging needle the Nikkormats used and the FE would take up again a year later.

What Nikon chose to write down about the camera is telling. The Camera Chronicle account spends its space on the mirror box, which stopped being a single die-casting and became metal panels assembled by machine, and on the metering IC, the same chip as the F2 Photomic SB and AS finders but in a round TO-5 can the engineers called an octopus. This is a camera described from the production line rather than the showroom.

Two changes were made after release and Nikon dates neither. The shutter-release lock moved from a knurled ring around the button to the edge of the winding lever, and the knurled ring vanished from the rewind knob; both were parts-count reductions, and the first was carried onto the FE. camera-wiki puts the lock change at about 1979 and adds that later bodies were internally strengthened. There is no factory serial list to check any of this against.

That absence is the largest thing to say about the FM. No production total has been published, by Nikon or anyone else, for a camera made across five years and sold worldwide; no serial blocks have been published either, and Roland Vink’s database — the best serial source for Nikon lenses and digital bodies — still lists the manual-focus film cameras as future work. Even the metering cell is contested between two Nikon pages, one calling it a gallium arsenide phosphide photodiode and the other a silicon photodiode. A camera this common should be easier to count than this.

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 FM
Nikon FM — Cls With Attitude at English Wikipedia, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.5)
Nikon FM
Nikon FM, black — Michael Sporleder, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
Nikon FM
Nikon FM, top plate — Ankara, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $200 across 9 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $160–$500). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 2 days: unchanged from $200.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-09-11$200$160–$5009
2026-09-06$200$160–$5009

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Related: Nikon FE · Nikon FM2 · Nikon FM3A

Lenses for this body: Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/3.5 · Nikkor 50mm f/2 (F mount) · 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.