The Nikon FM2 is a classic, Fully-Mechanical Film Camera

It’s difficult to express just how obsessed I am with the Nikon FM2. It was released during a time when Nikon cameras were the top choice for photojournalists, environmental conservationists, and war photographers. The FM2 represents a time when cameras were rugged and built to last, and it shows when you hold one of these beauties in your hand. Supposedly the Canadian government still uses the FM2 in the Arctic due to its reliability, particularly in low temperatures, which I suppose shows us that sometimes the best tool for the job requires one not to look towards new tech as a potential savior and solution, but may occasionally require one to look back.

My wife Emilee, who is the other half of Ideal Wedding Photo, took the plunge into film photography before even I had. I of course had been interested in the possibility of shooting film in the past, but only as a novelty, since I still viewed the medium as antiquated in comparison to the wildly impressive digital cameras of today. However, after seeing the images from her first few rolls of film, especially her portrait shots, I finally caved. We decided pretty quickly after that to offer film photography services as a part of our wedding packages.

The question then came of what cameras we should invest in for the purposes of wedding film photography. At the time, Emilee had a Pentax K1000 she purchased off eBay, but I wasn’t a big fan of it. The Pentax is a fantastic camera, but I found its pointed advance lever and overall chunky design to not be particularly inspiring. The film counter was also broken, and it occasionally jammed, further hurting my confidence in it as a creative tool. We needed another solution. I at least knew I wanted an SLR for accurate framing, and my research quickly led me to Nikon, since their days of making film SLRs seemed to be a golden age for the brand. From stopping a bullet in Vietnam to documenting the Arctic wastes, it was clear there was a lot of history here, and many could attest to the reliability of their SLR offerings.

But why did I choose the FM2 over other models? After all, the FM3 has shutter priority, and the F3 had a very appealing removable viewfinder that you could swap for a waist level one. What it came down to for me was simplicity. I’ve always been a manual only kind of guy, and a fully mechanical, fully manual film camera in a compact-ish body was very appealing.

I also adored the design of this camera in particular. It’s hard for me to say exactly what I like about it, but let’s just say there’s a reason Nikon mimicked this iconic design for their vintage styled mirrorless Nikon ZF. I love that design so much that I’ve heavily considered picking up the ZF as a digital counterpart to my FM2.

At the end of the day, however, I knew that the specific model I would choose actually mattered very little since they would all do the job perfectly well. I placed my order for the FM2 which was bundled with a 50mm f/1.8 lens, and I added a Nikkor ai-s 28mm f/2.8 and rope strap to my cart for good measure. From then on I really haven’t looked back.

After using the FM2 for weeks and putting over 15 rolls of film through it, I have some thoughts. For one, wow. This camera absolutely rips. One thing I particularly like is the film advance lever. When pressed against the camera, it locks your shutter and turns off your light meter. This is extremely useful for not accidentally taking a shot as the camera bumps against your waist, but also it conserves the tiny watch batteries that can power the light meter for months at a time. This lends this camera to the “always ready to shoot” mindset I was looking for film cameras to provide. There are no batteries that need to be charged before a shoot, no SD cards filled with hundreds of unnecessary shots to dump onto my computer afterwards, just the simple and pure joy of analog photography.

To take another angle of this camera more appropriate to our brand as a wedding photo/video company, the reliability of this camera is unmatched. I needed to not only find this out for myself, but I needed to hear it from dozens of other professionals over decades of using this camera. One of my main concerns with film photography was something possibly going wrong. But with the Nikon FM2, those concerns are long gone. From the camera’s self-lubricating components that keep everything feeling buttery smooth after literal decades of use, to its top-notch build quality protecting it from any possibly spill, this is a camera that I feel extremely comfortable bringing to a wedding or any other shoot.

Lastly, this camera serves as an excellent backup. When we book photo only weddings, I find myself second shooting for Emilee. What this camera provides so excellently is that fully mechanical always ready-to-go experience I was talking about earlier. This makes it an excellent counterpart to Emilee’s Nikon F5 which is very automatic and very electronic. The beast that is the F5 takes not 1 or 2 double AA batteries, but 8. Of course it’s justified since it’s a film camera that can shoot 8 frames per second if you want (which is insane for a film camera). I can rest assured that the Nikon FM2 will always be at my side, ready at a moments notice no matter what, and will always work as-is, without batteries, and without having to whisper “please work.”

So there’s my short spiel about why I love the Nikon FM2. At the end of the day, the exact tool matters very little compared to an artist that knows how to wield it, but I will say that having something as trustworthy as the FM2 give me the piece of mind to forget about the tool and focus on just getting the shot.