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

Nikon FM2

Nippon Kogaku · Nikon F mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back · 1982

Also known as: New FM2 · FM2N · FM2n · FM2/T · ニコンFM2

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
FM2 · [object Object] Nikon F 1982–1984 — No separate figure published
New FM2 (FM2n) Nikon F 1984–2001 — No separate figure published
FM2/T Nikon F 1993–1997 — No figure published
FM2 Limited Edition (Year of the Dragon) Nikon F 2000–2000 — 2,000 cameras (Shashinki)
  1. No production total has been published for the FM2 in any of its forms, over a run of nineteen years. Nikon's own history of the camera is an essay on shutter metallurgy and counts nothing; the Nikon Museum page gives dates and no quantities.
  2. The one edition with a published figure is the 2000 Year of the Dragon kit, at 2,000 cameras, and that number comes from a collector's account rather than from Nikon.
  3. Titanium was chosen for the blades because duralumin was not strong enough at the speed required; the honeycomb etching removed mass without losing stiffness. Aluminium alloy reached 1/4000 later, once caulking had improved — which is why late bodies are the cheaper ones to buy and, on the evidence, no worse.
  4. The company that made this camera changed its name partway through the run: Nippon Kogaku K.K. became Nikon Corporation in 1988. The nameplate never said anything but Nikon.
  5. Richard Haw, who strips these cameras for a living, records that the shutter was designed by Nikon and manufactured by Copal, and that the late aluminium blades are the better ones in cold weather rather than merely the cheaper ones. He also lists the 1983 revision as bringing an improved mirror box and a brighter focusing screen alongside the 1/250 sync — two changes Nikon's own account of the camera does not mention.
  6. Two further limited editions appear in Haw's account and nowhere in Nikon's: a "Year of the Dog" body, and a Lapita version in orange faux leather made for a Japanese magazine. Neither has a published quantity, and neither is confirmed by a second source here.
  7. Mike Eckman states that the FM2/T's titanium is confined to the covers and that its shutter blades are aluminium like any other late body. That is consistent with the 1993–97 dating of the /T against a blade change around 1989, but no factory statement has been found either way.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • 1/4000 top speed with the batteries out: the meter is the only thing they run
  • A fixed meter coupling lever — pre-AI lenses will not mount, where they do on the FM and FE
  • Shutter blades visible through the gate: honeycomb-etched titanium early, plain aluminium late

FM2:

  • 1/200 X-sync marked on the dial
  • Titanium shutter blades, etched in a honeycomb pattern, visible with the back open

New FM2 (FM2n):

  • 1/250 X-sync; the 1/200 setting is gone from the dial
  • An N engraved before the serial number on the back of the top plate

FM2/T:

  • Titanium top plate, bottom plate and back
  • Serial number prefixed T rather than N

FM2 Limited Edition (Year of the Dragon):

  • A gold dragon about 2cm across, set in resin on the front of the body

Serial-range notes

N-prefixed
An N engraved before the number on the back of the top plate marks a New FM2. There is no date code in the number, and no other letter appears on a standard production body — but the letter prefix is not unique to the N: see the T below.
chrome above 7249xxx; black 73xxxxx and above
camera-wiki's rule of thumb for telling a New FM2 from a first-type FM2 where the N is worn or absent. Not a factory statement.
about 750xxxx
Where the titanium blades are said to give way to aluminium. Readers of Thom Hogan's film-camera site report a titanium shutter at 738xxxx and an aluminium one at 757xxxx. The number is inferred from two observations and Nikon has published nothing. Mike Eckman and Richard Haw both place the change at about 1989–90 by date rather than by number.
T-prefixed
FM2/T numbers begin with the letter T. Mike Eckman states it, and mir.com.my states it and photographs the engraved number to show it. Two independent accounts, one of them with the object pictured, so it is adopted here — and it corrects the older reading that the N was the only letter Nikon put in front of an FM2 serial number.

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back
Finder
Fixed eye-level pentaprism, interchangeable focusing screens; LED display, shutter speeds and aperture direct readout. · 0.86× magnification · 93% coverage · no rangefinder image
Shutter
vertical-travel focal plane, bearing-mounted blades, mechanical throughout · 1s – 1/4000 and B; blade travel quoted at 3.3 milliseconds · flash sync 1/200 to 1984, 1/250 thereafter · self-timer
Film advance
single-stroke lever
Back
hinged
Meter
TTL centre-weighted 60/40 at full aperture, three LEDs (+ ● −). Two 1.5V silver-oxide or alkaline cells, or one 3V lithium; the meter is the only thing they power.
Motor drive
MD-12 — 3.2 frames a second.
Weight
540 g
Dimensions
142.3 × 89.7 × 60.2 (W × H × D), body only, from Nikon's specification mm
Country
Japan
Original price
$364 body only in 1982; $525 by 1988; $745 from 1995 until it was withdrawn (today $1,180)
Accessories
MD-12 motor drive · MF-16 data back · SB-15 Speedlight · SB-16B Speedlight

Where sources disagree

First
  • 1984 — Nikon's Camera Chronicle Part 13, the Nikon Museum, and Wikipedia
  • mid-1983 — camera-wiki
  • 1983 — Richard Haw, who titles the camera by that year; Mike Eckman writes 1983-84

Better supported: 1984

Nikon dates the sync change itself, and names the model in the same sentence. The 1983 date is the one that circulates among repairers and reviewers, and it is possible the two are describing announcement and availability rather than disagreeing.

Weight (grams)
  • 540g body only — Nikon's own specification, in the New FM2 instruction manual: "Weight : (camera body only): Approx. 540g or 19 oz." English Wikipedia's article text, Casual Photophile and mir.com.my all read the same way
  • 520g body only — English Wikipedia's infobox, which its own article text contradicts
  • 548g — Mike Eckman, weighing a body himself

Better supported: 540g

Settled against the maker. This table carried 520g, which is the figure in English Wikipedia's specification box; the prose of that same Wikipedia article says 540g, so the page disagrees with itself and cannot be the authority either way. Nikon's manual says approximately 540g body only, and Casual Photophile's arithmetic depends on it — the titanium body's saving of 25 grams, or 4.6%, only works from 540 to 515. Eckman's 548g is a weighed example against a figure the manual itself calls approximate. One loose end: mir.com.my's transcription of the specification adds a parenthesis putting titanium-shuttered FM2 bodies at 590g, which is the published weight of the FM and is not credited to Nikon; it is not adopted here.

First
  • 1993, discontinued 1997 — Wikipedia; Thom Hogan gives 1993 as well, as does Casual Photophile
  • 1994, discontinued 1997 — Nikon Museum; Mike Eckman and mir.com.my both write 1994

Three published accounts each way, and Nikon's own article on titanium cameras discusses the F2 Titan and the F3/T and never mentions an FM2/T. The one maker page that names the camera at all — the Nikon Museum — is on the 1994 side, and nothing from Nikon supports 1993; both ends of the run being quoted as 1997 suggests the difference is announcement against availability rather than a real disagreement. Left unresolved because a museum listing is a thin thing to overturn three accounts with.

Finish
  • Champagne body with a champagne-finished lens ring — Shashinki, from an owner's account of the kit
  • Black paint — Nikon Museum's list of FM2 versions

Possibly two different commemorative runs rather than one described twice. Recorded unresolved.

What reviewers say

History

The FM2 of 1982 is a metallurgy story. Nikon wanted a faster mechanical shutter, and a faster shutter means either more force behind the blades or less mass in them. More force was ruled out on strength grounds, so the blades had to get lighter. Aluminium alloy — duralumin — was tried and rejected as too weak. Titanium was adopted, etched in a honeycomb pattern that removed material while keeping the panel stiff, and the result travelled the gate in 3.3 milliseconds. That bought 1/4000 of a second and a flash sync of 1/200, both of them firsts, in a camera with no electronics in the exposure chain at all.

In 1984 the sync went to 1/250 and the 1/200 mark left the dial. Nikon called the revision New FM2 at home and FM2N in the United States, and marked it with a single letter N engraved before the serial number. That letter is the only version identification on a standard production body, and there is no date code in the number; the titanium FM2/T carries a T in the same place instead.

Later still the blades changed back to aluminium. Improved caulking had made 1/4000 achievable in the cheaper metal, and Nikon says so in its own history without giving a year; the outside sources say 1989. Where in the numbers it happened is a matter of collected observation rather than record: readers of Thom Hogan’s site report titanium at 738xxxx and aluminium at 757xxxx, which puts the change somewhere near 750xxxx and no closer.

Two special bodies sit alongside the production run. The FM2/T replaced the top plate, bottom plate and back with titanium, took a T in front of its serial number, and listed at $1,120 — dated 1993 by Wikipedia, Thom Hogan and Casual Photophile, 1994 by Nikon’s own museum and by two others, and unmentioned in Nikon’s article about its titanium cameras. In 2000 came a limited edition with a gold dragon set into the front of the body, sold as a kit with a matching 50mm f/1.4; a collector’s account of the kit puts it at 2,000 pieces in a champagne finish, while the Nikon Museum lists a 2000 limited edition in black paint. Those may be the same camera described badly or two different ones.

Nineteen years in the catalogue, three named versions, at least two commemoratives, and no production total from anyone. The only number anybody publishes is the 2,000 dragons, and it does not come from Nikon.

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 FM2
Nikon FM2, black, with the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 — Johan from Turku / Åbo (from Ostrobothnia), Finland, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Nikon FM2
Nikon FM2/T, titanium — Édouard Hue (User:EdouardHue), via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Nikon FM2
Nikon FM2 with the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 — Bepatman, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $420 across 55 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $320–$500). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 2 days: unchanged from $420.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-09-11$420$320–$50055
2026-09-06$420$320–$50055

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

Related: Nikon FM · Nikon FE · Nikon FM3A · Nikon FM2 Half Frame

Lenses for this body: Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 · Micro-Nikkor 200mm f/4 · Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 · Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 · Nikkor 135mm f/2 · Nikkor 20mm f/2.8 · Nikkor 24mm f/2 · Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 · Nikkor 28mm f/2 · Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 · PC-Nikkor 28mm f/3.5

Sources (15)

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.