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

Nikon FM3A

Nikon · Nikon F mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back · 2001

Also known as: FM3a · ニコンFM3A

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
FM3A Nikon F 2001–2006 — No figure published
  1. No production figure has been published. Nikon's own long account of the camera names the month production started, the month it stopped, the size of the development team and the price in yen, and never states how many were made.
  2. Development began in December 1998 with seven engineers, later twelve, drawn from the Ohi Plant and from Mito Nikon — the group company that had built the Nikkormats — and the production staff joined at the start because so much of the assembly was hand work.
  3. Spot metering and mirror lock-up were both attempted and both abandoned: the two photodiodes sit either side of the eyepiece with undivided receiving faces, and the masks needed to make spot metering work could not be made to move accurately in volume.
  4. The top cover is drawn from a solid brass sheet 0.7mm thick, thinned to about 0.2mm at its thinnest point, in stages rather than one press. Nikon credits engineers close to retirement with knowing how.
  5. The needle ammeter had to be sourced abroad after a Japanese maker declined the job; Nikon bought a second-hand FE2, dismantled it and showed the subcontractor the original part.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • Aperture-priority automation AND every mechanical speed without a battery: the only camera that does both
  • DX contacts inside the film chamber — the first manual-focus Nikon SLR to read them
  • TTL flash control, with a −1 EV flash compensation button at the base of the mount
  • A fixed meter coupling lever, as on the FM2: pre-AI lenses do not mount

FM3A:

  • An A on the shutter dial next to a full mechanical range from 1s to 1/4000
  • A single needle in the finder against a vertical speed scale — the FE2's ammeter, remade
  • A pointed pentaprism cap quoting the Nikon F, and a chrome shutter dial on the chrome body where the FM2 used a black one

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back
Finder
Eye-level pentaprism; K3 split-image and microprism screen standard, B3 matte and E3 etched optional. Shutter speed, meter needle, direct aperture readout, exposure compensation mark and flash ready light. · 0.83× magnification · 93% coverage · no rangefinder image
Shutter
Vertical-travel metal focal plane, hybrid: the rear curtain has two stop shoes, one released by an electronic timer on A and one by a mechanical governor on every other setting. · A — 8s to 1/4000 stepless under electronic control (the dial is marked 1 to 1/4000); M — B and 1s to 1/4000 under mechanical control, with no battery. · flash sync 1/250 · self-timer
Film advance
single-stroke lever, 30° standoff and 135° stroke
Back
hinged and detachable; MF-16 data back fits in its place
Meter
TTL centre-weighted at full aperture, about 60% of sensitivity on a 12mm circle, two silicon photodiodes flanking the eyepiece behind the prism; needle display. EV 1–20 at ISO 100 with an f/1.4 lens. Film speed by DX (ISO 25–5000) or by hand (ISO 12–6400), ±2 EV compensation in thirds, AE lock.
Motor drive
MD-12 — Up to 3.2 frames a second; with it fitted the meter holds on for about 66 seconds instead of 16.
Weight
570 g
Dimensions
142.5 × 90 × 58 (W × H × D) mm
Country
Japan
Original price
¥96,000 silver and ¥99,000 black at launch, tax excluded; US list $820, chrome body only (today ¥108,000)
Accessories
MD-12 motor drive · MF-16 data back · K3, B3 and E3 focusing screens · AI Nikkor 45mm f/2.8P

14mm eyepoint at −1.0 dioptre.

Where sources disagree

Volume production start
  • April 2000, at Mito Nikon — the narrative of Nikon's Camera Chronicle article
  • April 2001 — Mito Nikon's own final-shipment email, quoted verbatim later in the same article: "FM3A entered the volume production in April 2001 and its production is discontinued with the last shipment in January 2006"

One source, contradicting itself a few paragraphs apart. April 2000 fits the article's claim of about a year of production preparation before the July 2001 launch; April 2001 is what the factory wrote down at the end.

Reason for discontinuation
  • Concentration of resources on digital — Nikon's own article, which drops the F100 and F80 at the same moment "to allow Nikon to concentrate its resources on the digital camera business"
  • Compliance with the EU Restriction of Hazardous Substances directive of 2003, widely repeated in secondary accounts of the camera

Better supported: Concentration of resources on digital

The RoHS explanation does not appear in Nikon's own account, which gives the digital transition as the cause and mentions no directive.

What reviewers say

History

The FM3A exists because two cameras that look identical are not related. The New FM2 was mechanical and battery-independent; the FE2 was electronic and offered aperture priority; users had been asking for years for one camera that did both, and nobody — including Nikon — had built it. Development started in December 1998 with seven engineers in a room at the Ohi Plant, later twelve, joined from the outset by production staff from Mito Nikon because the thing was going to have to be assembled largely by hand.

The answer was the hybrid shutter. A focal-plane shutter ends its exposure when the rear curtain is released; the FM3A’s rear curtain has two stop shoes rather than one. On A an electronic timer releases the electronic shoe. On any marked speed the electronic shoe retracts and a mechanical governor does the work, which is why the camera runs from 1 second to 1/4000 with the cells out. Nikon’s engineers expected 1/4000 to be impossible in a mechanism this complicated and got there by adjustment.

The cost of that decision was space. The shutter unit grew, the body was not permitted to, and the linkage from the shutter dial had to pass the needle ammeter that sits between them — the FM2 has no ammeter and plenty of room, the FE2 has an ammeter and only wires to route. A wire linkage was tried, as on the original FM, and slackened; a U-shaped bypass of gears replaced it, and then the backlash in those gears had to be taken out by hand, camera by camera, on the line. Spot metering and mirror lock-up were both attempted and both dropped.

It went on sale in July 2001, three months late because the orders that arrived after the announcement could not be filled, at ¥96,000 for the silver body and ¥99,000 for the black. It won a Good Design Award that year and a Camera Grand Prix Special Prize the next. In January 2006, five years in, production stopped — Nikon’s account gives the digital transition as the reason and drops the F100 and F80 in the same breath, while secondary accounts prefer the EU’s hazardous-substances directive, which Nikon does not mention.

For a camera this thoroughly documented, the arithmetic is missing. Nikon published the development dates, the team size, the drawing thickness of the brass cover and the price in two finishes, and never said how many were made. Its own article cannot even keep the start of volume production straight: the narrative says April 2000, and the farewell email from the factory, quoted a few paragraphs later, says April 2001.

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 FM3A
Nikon FM3A, chrome — Valwit, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
Nikon FM3A
Nikon FM3A with the Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 — Steve Hodgson from Edinburgh, Scotland, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Nikon FM3A
Nikon FM3A, top plate — Bubba73 (Jud McCranie), via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $1,000 across 30 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-10 (middle half $920–$1,200). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 2 days: unchanged from $1,000.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-09-10$1,000$920–$1,20030
2026-09-06$1,000$920–$1,20030

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Related: Nikon FM · Nikon FE · Nikon FM2

Sources (8)

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.