Nikon FE2
Above is a photo of my newest camera, a Nikon FE2. It's a 35mm flim SLR which was produced between 1983 – 1989 so this baby is between 19 and 25 years old. It's built like a tank and works like a charm. The camera came with a clean Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 AIs lens. Where'd I get it? On the street. It was on top of a dresser outside of Uhuru in the 'FREE' pile. When I picked it up, it wasn't working. I figured it was a battery thing and brought it home and stuck some new batteries in and it sounded mechanically sound.
I had a roll of Tri-X lying around so I stuck it in and went out shooting for the day. I just got the roll back from Philadelphia Photographics and, as you can see from the shot above, the camera and lens seem to be working fine. There's some brassing on all the corners of the body and there's a dent on the front of the lens, but it's all good. The only issue is the film advance lever doesn't have a catch preventing the film from advancing without a shutter click. I accidentally wasted 2 frames on the test roll due to advancing the film when I had done so already. The double exposure lever works fine though. This camera has a nice needle light meter in the viewfinder like the one in the Canon AE-1 which I learned how to shoot on almost 15 years ago.
One last shot of what the top plate of the camera looks like. The viewfinder is nice and big and magnified. But it's 93% coverage. Compared to the 100% the Nikon F3 provides, it's a noticeable difference, but not by much. The FE2 seems to meter 2 stops faster than the F3 which seems about right – I've always thought my F3 was metering under (but not out of the range of negative film). I'm going to dial in a -2 EV into the F3 from here on out.
A link to a flickr set of my first roll with the FE2.
Long live film!
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June 24th, 2008 @ 1:13 pm
You lucky SOB.
June 27th, 2008 @ 6:10 pm
Not to be a downer, but I've heard that electronics picked up on the street occasionally crap out after a week or two.
July 2nd, 2009 @ 5:39 pm
Hi Philly, lucky you, I still have mine too, after I bought it new in 85, it's still in my possession and in working condition. A fine camera, soon I bring it to my collection of old camera's ens switching over to my new Digital D700. I'll never will sell this camera, I even bought my first camera back on the Internet when I started making pictures. I was so stupid to sell it for DFL 10,– or Guilders, I bought it back fo € 5,–.
January 20th, 2010 @ 11:18 am
Congrats on your great find! I loved my Nikon FE2 – served me well for many years.
August 27th, 2010 @ 5:40 pm
Constant winding on thing is normally easy to fix. Take off the bottom plate, there is a spring connected to a cam/catch that needs stretching (carefully). It's pretty simple and should be obvious once you have the bottom plate off. Mine did the same thing, now works fine.
Hope that helps?