NIKON FA

This is my first full-frame 35mm film SLR.

I bought it from a guy for just 400 bucks. Cosmetically it it is in good shape, and it is 100% functioning and all internals are in good condition. It does shows some brassing which is a sign of usage and the handgrip is missing. This Nikon FA is in custom order, professional black colour. What's more, it came with Nikon's original strap which was made 30 years back, same as this classic beauty (the Nikon FA was released at 1983).

The Nikon FA has all PSAM modes and even Matrix metering. The model I got has a split screen inside which is extremely useful for focusing. This is vital, since the Nikon FA is a manual focus film SLR. This camera, made in the 1980's, is very solid, sturdy and made fully out of metal (brass). Everything feels so great back then, and even the cheapest 50mm 1.8 manual focus from its days is completely made out of metal. I tried for a while, and the 50mm (not bought) feels so perfectly damped, precisely constructed and solidly built- it matches flawlessly with this camera.

Before I load the film, I enjoyed pressing the release button and feeling the shutter mechanism. I can feel the mechanics inside. I bought a Fuji Velvia 50 beforehand and after lunch, I loaded the film. My impression on the film is that the canister is quite smaller than what I'd previously thought. As this is my first time loading film, I spent 3 minutes trying to load the film and when I finally knew how to load it, it just took 10 seconds loading it.

Because the first few frames before frame '1' of the FA is fixed at 1/250 sec, I used my D90 to measure the exposure of the scene before shooting.

Manual mode.

1/250 s.

f/7.1.

ISO 200.

Read- 2 stops overexposed.

Perfect for ISO 50.

I dialled in the same setting on my FA and took a few shots of a football field.

I'll see when the results come out.