Nikon FG

This camera was acquired through the online auction house. You know, that one. The included Series E 50mm 1.8 was the only reason I bought it, the auction listing actually said that the body was non-working and was for parts/repair only. But, $35 isn't terribly bad for a Series E lens so I went ahead and got it. It turns out the light meter does NOT activate on the Bulb (B) or Manual (1/90s) settings. This is what the previous owner had the shutter set to. Once I loaded some batteries it was working perfectly. In fact, except for the light seals the body is in fabulous condition.

Some quick thoughts:

-this is the first manual focus Nikon I've owned. The Type K focussing screen (with split image rangefinder) absolutely blew me away. This is head and shoulders better compared with other focussing screens I've used (mostly on M42 Pentax screw mounts). Really stellar, it's a snap to get perfectly crisp focused shots.

- Program mode seems to work pretty well. You just set your F-stop to the smallest value (highest F number) , focus, and shoot. The onboard computer calculates the best aperture and shutter for you. From an amateur's perspective it seems to underexpose ever so slightly, but what the hell do I know? I try not to use this feature a lot, if I wanted automatic operation I would just take out my Canon DSLR.

- This was one of Nikon's quote-unquote budget line SLRs, meaning they were using plastic for some components. While this has some drawbacks, one big plus is that it's really light and is perfect for carrying around all day. Especially if you've got the 1.8 Series E lens, you could carry this for hours and forget you had it on you.

- even though there is some plastic here, the build quality still feels really superb. I'm guessing it could take a fair amount of abuse and still come out fine. I recently took it on a week long trip to Costa Rica, see pics here:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.