A moment of weakness

[Mablo]

I too had a moment of weakness and bought a chrome FE2 in good condition. I'm not the greatest fan of FE2's viewfinder needle system and will keep the old and trusty FM in the cupboard, just in case.

 

[robert blu]

Congrats! I have one as well since many years and it's an excellent camera. In the film era, which for me is still going on (!) I was using more the FM2 than the F100. Size and weight...
robert

 

[Steve Bellayr]

Use good lenses on it and you probably will not be disappointed. But, then again those good lenses will cost more than the camera.

 

[Huss]

If you dont mind saying, how much did you pay for it? Ive been wanting an FM2 for quite a while, I just refuse to pay the prices they've been going for on ebay lately. I haven't seen a single one go for under $100, and the real nice ones are usually $150 - $200.

I have an FM already and other than the titanium shutter and 1/4000 top speed, its the same camera I believe, so I dont have a lot of urgency to upgrade, but I will if I find one for the right price.

I paid $100 off Craiglist for a really nice one about a year ago. Going rate now does seem to be at least $150 for Buy it Now. I pay more attention to actual auctions, and there is a really nice one on there at the moment with the bidding at $100.

The biggest practical differences between the the FM and FM2n, are the FM2n has a much brighter focussing screen that is interchangeable, the flash sync speed is at 1/250 (latest models), and of course the two stops higher shutter speed. Which is really useful if you want to shoot to either freeze moment better, or at wider apertures in bright light. Of course ND filters also help but say you are using 400 speed film on a bright day. Regular exposure would be 1/500 @ f16. The widest the FM could go would be 1/1000 @ f11. An FM2n could go to 1/4000 @ f5.6. Throw on a 3X ND filter (the darkest I use on SLRs as the image gets too dark after that to focus easily), and the FM can shoot down to f4, while the FM2n can now open up and use f2 @1/4000 in bright daylight!
That really opens up creative avenues, and to think that this is from a camera with a fully mechanical shutter. Really quite cool.

Of course you could use slower films, but this shows how flexible the FM2n can be from daylight into evening lighting situations with just one type of film.

 

[bigeye]

The 105/2.5 & 28mm on the FE is a great bagless combination.