snegron7
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 p.6 #1 · Which Nikon film body | |
coralnut wrote:
Pound nails?!? Seriously?!?
I never had interest in the FM2 and similar Nikon consumer cameras for their outright durability, I was more interested in their extremely light weight, simple control interface, and the reduced electronics count to minimize the number of things that could go wrong in the field. I carried one next to an N8008 as an extremely lightweight backup as I expected the high tech circuit-laden new camera to be the one that would fail. I thought the compact nature and light weight of the FM2 would make it a good backup.
As it turned out, the plastic camera ended up being more durable in that MC crash. Due to the way things were packaged, and the way that the bike slid on it's side rather than tumbling, the contents of the tank bag never contacted the pavement directly. They just got jostled around enough in the tank bag to bang on one another, and in that bag the fight was won by the plastic N8008 and the metal pro-grade zooms and lost by the flimsy bodied FM2n.
The problem was one of plasticity. The engineering definition of plasticity runs counter to what we think of as the meaning of the term "plastic." In engineering terms "plastic deformation" is the ability of a solid material to undergo permanent deformation after yielding to an external force. The metal body of the FM2n lacked elastic behavior and exhibited plastic behavior; it did not return to it's original shape after minimal stress (elastic behavior) and yielded under the force to undergo permanent deformation (plastic behavior) with comparatively little force applied to it; funny thing, the plastic body N8008 camera and the metal push-pull zooms all exhibited elastic behavior, failed to yield under stress, and exhibited no plastic deformation.
I was surprised at how bad the damage was to the FM2 while everything else just shrugged off the event. The biggest surprise was that the internals (meter, shutter) were undamaged while the flimsy metal body is what yielded to destroy the camera. That "pound nails" idea is just silly. The FM2 body isn't at all durable. The N8008 plastic camera body really was more durable than the flimsy metal one. When it came to designing cameras, Nikon actually knew what they were doing when they changed the body composition to make them more durable. Yes, the FM2 will never be good for pounding nails. It's a flimsy camera, but a wonderful camera nonetheless.
Somehow nostalgia gives us the tendency to remember things as better than they actually were. I think that applies to the FM2 where people tend to over romanticize it.
In terms of durability, my hat is off to Nikon's more modern designs like the D810. I had left mine sitting on a kitchen chair, which when moved caused the camera to roll off of the chair, bounce a couple of times, then tumble down a flight of tile covered stairs into my basement. I was horrified. Luckily the camera was sporting a tiny 20mm AF lens and a battery grip, and the package was "round" enough to just roll down the stairs. I'm sure that if I had been using a longer lens there would have been enough leverage applied during one of the impacts to destroy the F-mount, but with the little 20mm lens there was nothing to catch on, and the camera just tumbled down the stairs without any damage. I hate to admit it, but my D810 has rolled off of a couch or a chair more times than I care to remember. the good thing about short lenses is that they allow the camera to roll without much risk of injury. the good thing about long lenses is that they tend to keep the camera from rolling off of a chair in the first place.
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I have had the exact opposite experience with metal vs plastic cameras.
Back in 1984, when my FM2N was new, I dropped it and it landed prism-first on the ground. The body only suffered a minor ding, hotshoe bent, but the shutter was intact. The only thing tgat went bad was the electronics for the meter. The meter never worked again, but the rest of the camera still work well today (never had it cleaned or maintained in any way).
Prior to 1984, I had a Pentax K1000. One day I absent-mindedly left it on tge trunk of my car and drove off. The K1000 bounced seceral ties on the pavement. All it got was a few scratches; it continued working well without a problem.
Fast forward to the era of plastic marvels; two of my Nikon D70's failed me. One failed the day after I purchased it (BGLOD). The other failed when I was taking pics at an event; fog machine turned on and the D70 shut down with an error message. A little bit of mist caused it to malfunction!!
My older Nikon film bodies (Nikon S2 rangefinder from 1956, Nikon F from 1974, Nikon F3 from 1983, and my Nikon F2A) are still running smoothly.
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They had all burst, with the expanding salts fracturing the battery carrier into little pieces and the pressure of the expanding solid chemicals flaking away the bottom of the battery compartment cowl. I had to dig the batts out with needle nose pliers and found a set of Duracell Ultra batteries that expired in 3/2013. Oops. Expensive misteak. 
Desmo the Film Enabler.