Hello all! I've got my dad's old Nikon FG and I'm having a bit of trouble with it. For some reason the mirror is locked up and the film advance lever won't move. I've poked and prodded all the buttons I could and haven't gotten anywhere. The exposure counter is still stuck on "S" even after I tried loading some film.
Any help? I can take pictures of anything you may need to see!
Chances are pretty good (90%+) that the batteries are dead. When this happens on an FG the mirror hangs up and the shutter (electronic) won't release, so of course you can't advance the film.
Set the shutter speed dial to M90 (1/90 mechanical release speed). If dead batteries are the cause of your problem, you should now be able to release the shutter and the mirror will return to the rest position.
If that fixed it, you need to replace the batteries before you try to use the camera again. The FG takes two 1.5 volt silver oxide button cells in a holder in the baseplate. SR44, S76 or equivalent (Eveready/Duracell 303/357). Any department store that sells watch batteries will stock them.
If that didn't fix it, you have a much more serious problem.
My thoughts are the same as Mikes as I had a similar problem at one time. A fresh battery got it working again. Hopefully that's all you need as they are neat little cameras.
Great little camera - I've backpacked quite a few miles with the FG & "Galen Rowell combo" of a 24mm & 85mm. One more quirk if the new batteries work: If you read the the PDF manual Michael kindly references above, you'll see a section devoted to loading the film (basics, I know). In the fine print, note that neither the FG's meter nor your shutter speed selection will work until the film is advanced to "1" on the counter. Meaning, you can't go out filmless to learn the camera. Unbelievably frustrating to me until I read the manual
Enjoy!
Ron
Thanks everybody for your input (except you papageno ).
Putting it into M90 got things working. I'd already replaced the battery and didn't think that'd be a problem -- looks like I got the wrong one. My dad had some crazy German batteries in there that weren't easily found so I guessed -- wrong!
Even with a brand new batteries installed you still need to switch it to M90 to first "clear" the mirror up condition.
Anyway - you got it working so now you know what to do if/when it happens again. The FG is very sensitive to weak batteries. Usually what happens when the batteries start to go is that ALL of the shutter speeds will release at 1/90 (easy to detect on the slow speeds of 1/15 and below). Eventually if the batteries get completely exhausted (as happened here) the mirror will hang, the shutter won't release, and everything locks up. M90 and fresh batteries are the cure.
).