A matter of physical touch

Nikon Corporation announces the FM3A as the successor to the FM2N. Yet I believe that FM3A will also, if not mainly, impact over the F3HP addicts. We will have the confluence of three trends here: FM2A, F3HP and FM3A – rather than a matter of linear succession inside the FM offspring. F3HP owners will be asking themselves if they should give F3HP up or at least add FM3a to their assets. Those who so far have wish listed F3HP will probably tremble while comparing a camera that will perform very much like a F3HP but costing less than a half. FM2n owners, by their turn, will have a feeling that their favorite camera was redesigned to gain part of the F3HP soul. For some this will sound as anathema. For both sides however, making up their minds will be no easy task, because the decision matrix is not of the kind leave-all-the-bad to take-all-the-good. In telling F3HP from FM3A, or FM3A from F3HP, we gain a little and lose a little whatever is our final choice.

Indeed FM3a is a hybrid creature. It has some of the attractive features of F3HP: minimum gift of automation over the aperture priority operation – plus an attractive, smart TTL flash metering. Running to 8s yet stepless – even so it stretches the automatic speeds longer than the default 1s of the FM2n. It also possesses one of the hallmarks of FM2n design: the highest known flash sync speed for the species and top 1/4000 shutter speed. However both of the old cameras conserve some distinctive features for each one only, which lessen the other values – for instance, mirror lockup remains for F3HP only, as well as the high point 100% viewfinder, the 19 choices of distinct focusing screens, plus minor gimmicks (as the eyepiece shutter or the T-speed setting). FM2n by its turn will get an F3HP user rid of the weird flash shoe and the incredibly clumsy LCD illuminator red button – at the cost of no illumination at all and it is definitely smaller and 60% lighter and as said, it’s cheaper!

Difficult decision, that is. Embrace a feature that you love and wail for the feature that you lose… knowing both sides for what they are. How one is supposed to produce an informed decision here?

Long time ago I heard a story – someone asked Igor Stravinsky, the composer, about which imagery or concepts were entertained in his mind while he was composing “The Rite of Spring”. He sharply shot back: “I was just thinking into the strings”. Many have commented this passage, complaining that it was too much a physical concern, while the music is in some sense pictorial. Critics replied that Stravinsky’s music was not pictorial and the physical stuff of an orchestra would more likely determine this composer's bent of mind than concepts, poetry or mental images. Indeed, perhaps we adults let ourselves be much more affected by toys and tools than kids do – in photography, having the mind set on certain physical resources: bodies, lenses and related stuff – may be the starting point to abstract pictorial art.

Following the lines of the above story as a metaphor, I believe that the decision of substituting a FM3A for a F3HP will be a matter of a physical touch. While using FM3A I realized right off that it feels like my FM2N. However new, I was already acquainted to it even before taking my first shoot and once I did it, I felt I had a dear old friend reborn in my elder hands. It suited completely to me like my FM2N does. It is an FM2N that curiously performs very much like my F3HP. It means that for those who are addicted to the punch and touch of an F3HP, FM3A will not do – and they will resort to some of the features of F3HP, that FM3A design left out, as a rationale for their eventual denial of FM3A. Again, I believe that an FM2N addict will reject or accept FM3A on the same physical basis. For the purists who hate even the minimalist concept of automation by aperture-priority, FM3A will be a FM2N endowed with an original sin. They will probably tell it to scram. Those who are not purists should be long willing this new spirit embodied in their old FM2N – after all if you turn off the A mode it will be an FM2N all the way. These will welcome the new tool long expected.

In my personal opinion, but this is completely a biased opinion, FM3A is not a successor to F3HP or FM2N; it will not supersede any of their old mates and is rather a complement to them. I bought one but I am not ready to surrender the F3 features that are out of it. And FM2N is a living philosophy of not being one of the many automata even in the most minimal sense. But my decision was physical. When I am concerned with candid fast photographs, I go along with my F3HP and I taste its goodness for it. It’s bulky, heavier, rugged and a delight to ready use. When I am feeling like Bresson (how I dare – what a honor for me) I take my FM2N with my AIS 50-f/1.4 and feel good with it. When I want almost all the features of my F3HP but the feel of my FM2N I go hybrid – I take my FM3A – it offers its own delights: smooth shutter song and what a bright viewfinder! Each one of them performs a very different physical task that bears heavily on and from my psychological mood. Yet all of them perform very akin to each other from a technological point of view. And the final art I get from them, this will most likely be determined by something else – something coming by chance from the world opportunities, something coming from myself.

This is my way; others may obviously feel differently – and the reflexes of these differences over future strategic decisions of Nikon manufacturers, like for instance discontinuing F3HP if it falls under the drain of consumers who may be shifting to FM3A instead, is one of my only objective worries.