Nikon Nikkormat FT (1965–1967)

Name: Nikon Nikkormat FT
Brand: Nikon

Nikon's first mid-range SLR asked you to stop down before every reading, and a lot of photographers were fine with that.

Overview

A Nikkormat FT is dense. The body weighs roughly 705 grams and measures 148 × 92 × 57 mm, with a brass top over die-cast aluminum. It sits in the hand heavy and deliberate, like most mid-sixties Nikon products.

Nippon Kogaku K.K. launched the FT in October 1965. It was Nikon's first serious mid-range 35mm SLR, aimed at advanced amateurs and semi-professionals who wanted Nikon optics and build without paying Nikon F money. The "Nikkormat" name drew that line: same F-mount, same lens ecosystem, lower price bracket. The FT was among the first Nikkormats, and it started a mechanical line that ran on through the FTN, FT2, and EL series.

The metering is the interesting part. The through-the-lens, center-weighted CdS system was advanced for its moment, a mid-priced camera reading light through the lens instead of off a cell on the front bezel. But it was a stop-down meter. You had to close the aperture manually to the shooting setting before the reading, so the viewfinder darkened every time you checked exposure. Owners learned to live with it. It was the price of accurate TTL metering across a wide lens range in 1965, and it put the FT a step behind contemporaries that had already moved to open-aperture metering. Contemporary coverage in High-Fidelity (September 1971, p.124) discussed the broader market pressures on camera makers of the era, with the drive toward stardom and its attendant problems shaping how equipment was marketed to serious amateurs.

Everything else is old-fashioned on purpose. The shutter is a horizontal-travel cloth focal-plane unit running 1 second to 1/1000, plus Bulb. There is one exposure mode: manual, with shutter speed and aperture set by hand. Film transport and shutter are entirely mechanical. The battery, a single 1.35V mercury PX625, only feeds the light meter. If it dies, the camera keeps taking pictures and you just lose the needle.

Key Features

Stop-Down TTL CdS Metering

A CdS cell behind the mirror read the scene through the lens with center weighting. That was a real step up from the external-cell meters on cheaper SLRs of the period. The workflow goes like this: close the lens down to the taking aperture, watch the finder dim, center the needle, then shoot. Photographers who came from rangefinders didn't mind. Photographers who had used a Spotmatic with its own metering quirks didn't necessarily see the FT as a downgrade either, since the tradeoff was real on both sides.

Horizontal Cloth Focal-Plane Shutter

The shutter runs 1 second to 1/1000 plus Bulb, in a horizontal-travel cloth curtain. It's the classic pre-Copal design, and it's the part of the FT that ages worst. Sticky curtains at intermediate speeds are a known complaint among long-term owners, and the shutter is the first thing any technician will check before quoting a service. A good one is smooth and quiet. A tired one will fire 1/125 at something closer to 1/60.

Brass-Top, Die-Cast Aluminum Chassis

The FT's reputation for surviving decades rests on its construction: a brass top plate over a die-cast aluminum body, wrapped in leatherette, with a reinforced lens mount. It's the same formula that made the Nikkormat line a working photographer's standby. It's heavy, but the mount stays true and the top plate doesn't dent the first time the camera swings into a doorframe.

Fixed Pentaprism with Split-Image and Microprism Focusing

The eye-level finder has a split-image rangefinder spot surrounded by a microprism collar, at 0.92x magnification and approximately 94% frame coverage. Focus is manual only, but the screen gives you two independent ways to confirm sharpness, which is more than some rivals offered at the price. Check any used example for haze in the prism. A cloudy finder is the difference between a $500 camera and a $150 one.

Full Nikon F-Mount Compatibility

The FT takes the full range of Nikon F-mount glass, including non-AI and AI Nikkor lenses, with stop-down metering for all of them. That kept the Nikkormat line relevant for years. Buy the body once, and the lenses you build around it follow you into any later Nikon F-mount camera. It's the FT's strongest argument against its screw-mount competition.

Flash Sync at 1/125 with PC Terminal and Hot Shoe

X-sync is available at 1/125, marked on the speed dial, with both a PC sync terminal for off-camera work and a hot shoe on top. For 1965 that's a usable, unremarkable flash setup.

Historical Context

The FT arrived in a mid-sixties SLR market where TTL metering was the new dividing line between serious cameras and consumer ones. It competed directly with the Pentax Spotmatic and the Canon FX, both of which also featured TTL metering and M42 screw mounts. Nikon's answer to those screw-mount systems was the F-mount, and that was the FT's structural advantage. A Spotmatic owner was locked into the M42 ecosystem. An FT owner was buying into the same lens catalogue the professional Nikon F used.

The compromise was the stop-down metering. Contemporaries with open-aperture metering had a real workflow edge, and Nikon knew it. The FT was succeeded in 1967 by the Nikkormat FTN, which added an instant-return mirror and improved meter coupling, the start of Nikon closing that gap. The FT was discontinued after only two years of production, which is a big part of why it's relatively rare today compared to the FTN and FT2 that followed it.

Collectibility & Value

The FT is sought after by vintage camera collectors, particularly those tracking the evolution of Nikon's SLR systems. The short 1965-1967 production run and the camera's mechanical complexity mean clean working examples are increasingly hard to find. Collector pricing for a good FT typically ranges from $250 to $500 USD depending on condition and provenance, a wide spread that reflects how much the meter and prism matter. Desirable examples have haze-free prisms, intact leatherette, smooth shutter operation, and original accessories such as the DK-2 eyepiece cup or the fitted case.

Before buying, verify shutter accuracy across all speeds, listen for mirror slap or sticking, and check the CdS meter cell for responsiveness. The common failures are well known to anyone who has serviced these bodies: degraded light seals that leak, stiff film advance levers, and meter cells that have drifted or corroded. The stop-down metering linkage can also stiffen or fall out of alignment over the decades, which is a job for a technician rather than a screwdriver. Sticky shutter curtains at intermediate speeds and degraded foam light traps around the film chamber round out the usual list.

The original 1.35V mercury PX625 is no longer manufactured, so users substitute modern alkaline or silver-oxide equivalents such as the Wein Cell, or fit adapters with voltage regulation to keep the meter reading honestly. Voltage differences will skew the needle if you don't address them. None of this affects the shutter or film advance, since the camera runs mechanically without power, but a meter that reads a stop off is worse than no meter at all.

Repair difficulty is moderate to high, mostly because of the precision mechanics and the scarcity of replacement parts. A regular CLA every five to ten years is the standard recommendation for keeping one of these running, and it's worth budgeting for at purchase.