Talk:Nikon FA

This article appears to be a bit crowded and disorganised. It is difficult to find essential information among less important. Someone also has put into it long passages of more general camera history which can also be found in articles for other cameras. Someone should clean up.

Jonaro 23:03, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

It is wrong to call the Nikon compact F-series SLRs "professional" (or even, as contributer 4.240.247.238’s calls them, "semi-professional") level cameras. While it is certainly true that many professional photographers did purchase and use Nikon compact F-series SLRs for their work, this is not a necessary AND sufficient condition to call a camera "professional" level. After all, working professional photographers have purchased and used point-and-shoot cameras in specific circumstances, but no one has ever called a PS a "professional" camera.

The Nikon compact F-series SLRs are rightly called "advanced amateur" level SLRs, because, by Nippon Kogaku's own standards, that was what they were. They may have been more ruggedly built and had more extensive accessory systems than advanced amateur SLRs from competing brands, but the compact F-series did not meet Nippon Kogaku's long-standing 150,000 minimum picture cycles before breakdown benchmark, were not moisture and dust-proofed, were not eligible for Nikon professional field services and did not have the interchangeable viewfinder heads of Nikon F-series professional level SLRs.

Shutter-mechanical
This suggests that the shutter is mechanically wound and released with only the speed being controlled electronically, making it effectively an manual camera:

"The FA did have one very rare and conservative feature for an electronically controlled camera. Nippon Kogaku's philosophy that a camera must always work when called upon resulted in the FA's backup ability to operate without batteries - albeit in a very limited fashion: completely manual mechanical control with two shutter speeds (1/250th second, marked M250, or Bulb) and without the light meter."--John Bessa (talk) 20:52, 25 June 2011 (UTC)