Nikon FG-20

Nikon built the FG-20 in 1984 to sit just under the FG, and the trade was simple: keep the small body and the aperture-priority brain, drop the program auto-exposure, and put the price where a film student could reach it. The FG had given Nikon a tiny auto-everything F-mount body in 1982, and it sold. The FG-20 answered the next question. What do you offer the buyer who wants a real Nikon F-mount camera but does not need program mode or the FG's full LED scale flashing warnings at them? You strip the program AE, simplify the finder display, and trim the cost.

So what you carry is small and light, plastic-shelled over a metal frame, and it tucks into a jacket pocket in a way an FE or FM never will. The viewfinder is decent for the class, bright enough, with a split-image rangefinder surrounded by a microprism collar that snaps in nicely with the primes people pair with it. The meter is center-weighted, and in aperture-priority you set the f-stop and let the electronics choose the shutter speed across the range, about 1 second to 1/1000. Flash sync lands at 1/120. That is competitive rather than special; plenty of peers already synced at 1/125, so think of it as keeping pace, not leading.

There is a manual mode, and it is honest, but the FG-20 is happiest left in auto. The finder readout is pared back: a simple meter needle pointing at a shutter-speed scale rather than the FG's full LED scale and warning lights. Just enough to tell you what the camera has chosen. The shutter is quiet for a film SLR, an electronic release rather than the harder mechanical action of an FM2. The cost of that softness is the body's real weakness. It runs on two button cells, and when they go flat you are left with the mechanical backup at 1/90 (the M90 setting) plus Bulb. Two speeds, not the whole camera. Pack spare cells before any trip that matters.

The other catch bites every cheap Nikon now. These bodies are forty years old, the light seals turn to tar, and the foam mirror bumper crumbles. Buy a tidy one and you are shooting that afternoon; buy a neglected one and it wants a service before the first roll. Because it shares the F mount, every manual-focus Nikkor and a heap of third-party glass screws right on, and that is why people still hunt these down: it is an inexpensive way into the Nikon manual-focus lens lineup.

That is where it sits today. Students and street shooters cross-shop it against the Pentax ME and the Canon AE-1 Program, and the calculus is the usual one. The ME is just as small and metering-simple; the AE-1 Program is bigger but adds program mode; the FG-20's pull is the F mount and the glass behind it. Nobody calls it a collector's piece. It is a user's camera, bought to be shot. Since the meter is a plain center-weighted average, a backlit portrait or a snow scene will fool it. That is where a spot or incident reading from the Zone Light Meter app helps you place the shadows where you want them and set the aperture in manual instead of trusting the body to guess.