I bought a new FA in 1985,my first Nikon. Still have it, it's always been reliable but rarely use it now. It certainly was state of the art in 1985, dual program modes, aperture and shutter priority modes plus full metered manual. Top speed 1:4000, flash syncro at 1:250. Must admit I never liked the matrix metering as it tended to over expose with transperancy film (trying to get detail in the shadow areas.) But fortunately at the push of a fiddly little button you could just switch over to centre weighted metering. And of course it had CYBERNETIC OVERRIDE. Several years ago I got a Fe2 and after using it for a while wondered if I bought the wrong camera back in '85. I love the match needle metering and never used the program or shutter prioity modes on the FA anyway. However thats probably doing the FA a disservice. It was a great camera to use in the hand. By the way it takes either a 3v lithium battery or two silver oxide or alkaline manganese batteries.