Nikon wasn’t just producing more of the same and following a business plan. Big deal, right? We could say that, but we’d be missing the point. Okay, so a camera company that had been making film cameras for its entire life made another film camera. The resulting FM3a sold well and became a legend among true film photography nerds both past and present. A small team of engineers and designers at Mito Nikon (a Nikon production facility that had originally created the Nikomat of the 1960s and later the F3, FM2n, F4, and more) set out to make something unusual for its time a manual-focus 35mm film SLR. The first in this final surge of remarkable Nikon film cameras took the shape of the FM3a. It debuted in 1999, officially ushering in the era of practical digital photography.īut at the same time, Nikon wasn’t quite ready to give up film cameras entirely (in fact, Nikon is one of only two major manufacturers still producing film cameras in 2018 Nikon’s F6 is joined by Leica’s M-A and MP).
Nikon s2 rangefinder professional#
Nikon was hard at work developing their first professional DSLR, the D1. In 1998, digital photography was the future and film as the dominant image capture media was clearly entering its twilight. Until then, I thought it’d be useful and fun to talk about what makes this camera so special.
Nikon s2 rangefinder full#
A full review will be hitting the site soon. Now it’s here, and the Nikon SP Limited Edition is easily the most interesting and exciting camera I’ve ever owned. I chose the Nikon SP 2005 after a days-long chat with the rest of the CP writing team. The camera I was searching for had to be entirely mechanical, highly capable and compact, but also rare and intrinsically valuable.
![nikon s2 rangefinder nikon s2 rangefinder](https://bmwdean.com/s2-manual-9.jpg)
In my case this machine would presumably go to an interested child or (if I live long enough) grandchild. As of last week, I’m lucky enough to own one.Ībout two months ago I started looking for a camera that I could keep and use forever, what I call an heirloom camera. Similar to a wristwatch, I define heirloom cameras as treasured objects that can be owned, used, and finally passed on to another person when our time is up. It’s also rare, limited to just 2,500 production units, and it’s paired to a world-class image-maker in the form of the exceptional W. It’s the most capable rangefinder that Nikon ever built, handcrafted with modern materials and manufacturing processes. All things considered, it may be the brand’s best film camera.
![nikon s2 rangefinder nikon s2 rangefinder](http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/companies/nikon/htmls/models/images/NikonS2big.jpg)
With easy film loading from the open back of the Leica M3 and its large viewfinder magnification.The Nikon SP Limited Edition from the year 2005 is a really special camera. 1954 was also the same year the Leica M3 was released, Leica’s first M mount camera. Nikon rangefinders were popular among photojournalists, press, and war photographers and they needed to keep up with the technological developments of other camera makers in the industry. All three of these features enabled resulted in a faster shooting process, that is getting from one shot to the next as quickly as possible. The S2 was also the first Japanese camera with both a film advance lever and a rewind crank. The Nikon S2 also included a lot of “firsts” such as the option to attach the world’s first battery-powered motor drive. This 1:1 magnification would later be adopted by all their future rangefinder models as well as Canon in 1959 with the Canon P rangefinder, and Cosina in 2004 with the Voigtländer R3 rangefinder. This was Nikon’s first rangefinder with the delightful 1:1 magnified viewfinder - giving photographers a real-world scale as they looked through the viewfinder, and also could of course shoot with both eyes open.
![nikon s2 rangefinder nikon s2 rangefinder](https://www.leicashop.com/classic/media/fa/a2/bf/1610966740/25337_221.jpg)
Additionally, the fastest shutter speed was doubled from 1/500th of a second to 1/1000th. Dropping the picture formats of the Nikon 1, M, and S, the Nikon S2 moved to the more common 36 x 24mm picture format, also known as 135mm or more commonly 35mm. Picking up production again from 36,746 in the previous model to 56,715 on the S2, Nikon seemed to have finally found their groove. Just six years after their first name branded camera the Nikon 1, Nikon released the 4th variant of their rangefinder camera the smaller, lighter, more functional Nikon S2 in 1954.