Nikkormat EL - a nice suprise
Every so often, something unexpected turns up that reminds you why you fell in love with photography in the first place. I recently bought a bag of old Nikon and Nikon fit vintage lenses for £60 a bit of a gamble, really, just hoping for one or two usable pieces of glass. 5 pireces of glass, a nikor ais 50mm f2, a 35-70 f3.5 nikkor zoom. A 28mm 2.5 sigma, Tamron 135mm f2.8 and a Vivitar Zoom lens. However buried among them in the box was a near-perfect Nikkormat EL, and I have to admit: I’m smitten.
At first glance, it looks every inch the serious Nikon of its era solid, purposeful, beautifully engineered. It takes a readily available battery, though it did take me a little while to work out exactly where the battery lives! Once powered up, I was pleasantly surprised by how familiar it felt. The build quality is remarkably similar to my Nikon F3, that same reassuring weight and mechanical smoothness.
The aperture-priority auto-exposure mode works perfectly, and the simple match-needle display in the viewfinder is wonderfully intuitive a design that makes so much sense once you use it. The finder itself is a touch dimmer than I’m used to, but that’s a small niggle in an otherwise delightful experience. The shutter sound, meanwhile, is addictive: a satisfying, confident click that feels like it means business.
It amazes me that some people still dismiss the Nikkormat range as not being “proper Nikons.” Spend five minutes with one and that notion evaporates this camera screams Nikon. Even the unmarked 8-second shutter speed still runs accurately on this 53-year-old body. That’s proper engineering.
After replacing the light seals (a fiddly job that I’ll probably redo properly next time), I loaded it up with a roll of Tri-X 400 and headed out this morning. There’s something about that first roll through a newly discovered camera a blend of curiosity and anticipation. The Nikkormat handled beautifully: balanced, confident, and quietly capable.
I’m actually quite enjoying the “Nikon shuffle”. Swapping between my previous F3, FA, and now this EL, each one with its own rhythm and personality. If the metering proves as accurate as it seems, the Nikkormat EL might just earn a permanent spot in my bag.
Bliss.
