Nikon FA -- how bad is the metering, anyway?

Well, with FA & MD-15 combos going for about $200 in Ex- condition

these days, I finally decided to make the leap to the "technocamera"

of 1983. Every so often I need a camera with some degree of exposure

automation and a motor drive (telephoto stuff, you know), and the EM

I had previously used is dying of a lamentably unrepairable meter

fault. I guess ideally I would have gone for an F4, but they're huge

and still too expensive for something that I'll probably just use

until DSLRs get cheap.

 

I mainly picked up the FA because I liked the way it integrates with

the MD-15 motor drive (it'll run on just the AA cells) and I need at

least center-weighted aperture priority from time to time. However,

all of this multi-segment metering stuff has me intrigued. I plan to

test it pretty thoroghly when it arrives, but to satisfy my curiosity

until it does, how bad is it? Good enough for print film? Is it

ever accurate enough for chromes, and under what circumstances? I've

read that using the camera in vertical orientation makes the meter

act weird, but besides that, is there anything to watch out for?

 

One other thing, on a slightly unrelated note: how much better are

the newer focusing screens for the FM3a than the old ones for the FE-

2, FA, etc?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Andrew

If it is like everything else Nikon made it will be just fine. The F2 had a primitive meter by today's standards but I wouldn't hesitate to count on it to expose any kind of film I shoot. The same goes for the Nikkormats, The F3, F4 and all the rest. If it is working properly you will get good results.

 

Rick H.

The metering's just fine. Matrix metering does have it's limitations & cannot be used 100% of the time. Obviously, MM has improved quite a bit over the years, but the MM in the FA worked just fine then & does just fine today. And that's for both print film & slides.

 

I noticed you worded your first question referring to how 'bad' the metering was. Did you hear from some source that the metering was 'bad'?

I read a few places that the multi-sample metering system in the FA is generally less reliable than later versions. A lot of people seem to think that it was an important conceptual leap for Nikon, but ultimately less than effective as an actual tool. Just curious to find out from actual users how good/bad it is in practice. For example, if you were to switch on matrix metering and go shoot a 36-roll of Velvia 50, how many of those frames would be satisfactorily exposed (based on how you typically shoot)?

I owned one for 4 years, and it never gave me a bad slide. Certainly nothing any different than any other Nikon camera that I've used with MM (6006, 8008, F4, N90, etc). I also know one induvidual who uses an FA for professional use.

 

I believe that the FA's MM system had a database of over 10,000 different exposure situations. Modern systems are much more advanced, but if the MM system was *so* unreliable in the FA, it would have turned into - and remained to this day - Nikon's biggest joke.

 

I'd say this: Take it out and test it with a roll of Velvia or other film. If it doesn't meet your needs, these days you can sell it for more or less what you paid for it.

Thanks Eric -- that's good to know. Just the sort of thing I was hoping to find out.

I've owned an FA since the '80's. On backlit scenes, the camera and you will occasionally disagree as to what should be the subject of the photo. Occasionally, strong sidelighting will cause slight underexposure as well. In such difficult circumstances, modern systems are better, but not perfect.

 

The biggest problem with the FA's autoexposure system is the lack of an AE lock.

The FA's MM metering is very consistent in its abilities and its shortcomings. As a result once you know how to read the scenes that may cause problems you can manually compensate and get predictable results. I used an FA for several years shooting indoor rock concerts and I loved it.

 

I used the FA as a complement body to my F3 and the exposures were accurate. The only real "problem" I had with the FA meter was that I couldnt see it in low light as it requires external light to provide a light source for the LCD meter.

 

I did miss the AE lock though but I apreciated the Shutter Priority mode that It has.

I use my FA heaps too. And I find that the multi pattern meter on it (Called AMP then), almost mirrors the Zone system. It would detect the brightest and darkest zones and choose a mid-point, like the basic zone system. But the Zone system's advantage is that you can choose what level of brightness to set your exposure at and that is the part that the FA's multi pattern meter won't do. So you might get exposures for the middle brightness, but that is not necessarily what you want when you are taking extremely high contrast shots.

 

To overcome it, you meter normally and if you think you'd prefer the midpoint darker, just dial in -ve exposure compensation. Where Nikon has advised in the manuals of the more modern matrix metered cameras that exposure compensation should not be used with matrix meter, with the FA's multi pattern meter, exposure compensation works quite well.

 

Since the FA doesn't have a vertical mercury sensor, it assumes that if the top half of the horizontally orientated frame is bright, that is the sky. It doesn't do the same for the top half of the vertically orientated frame, so it doesn't work well in that case.

 

If you can get the original brochure for multi pattern metering at Ken Rockwell's FA review site, you'll find the situations where it uses the particular zones in the meter pattern. Here's the link:

http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/matrix01.htm

 

Aaron