Hello, everybody! Do you remember Quiet Riot? They’re best known for the cover of Cum on Feel the Noise by Slade and Metal Health. The Slade song is one of my favorites but Quiet Riot’s version is better in my opinion because it gave the music a more modern, grittier sound. I don’t know if the younger head-bangers know what I am talking about so just check them out if you’re not familiar with them. Speaking of revisions, I will talk about an important camera today that turned Nikon’s first camera into a world-class product by implementing many clever changes.
Introduction:
The Nikon S2 replaced the Nikon I/M/S line of cameras. It’s an important one because it laid the foundation for their next camera, the Nikon SP. It’s still a simple camera when it came out but it was a huge leap from the Nikon S. It now sports a much bigger finder, an advance lever, 1/1000s speed, a rewind crank, a proper A/R ring and much better build. This camera made Nikon an important name in cameras because Japan now has something serious and respectable to rival the German cameras to a certain extent. It sold well, it’s Nikon’s most numerous rangefinder camera and the most common one you will see in the used market. Despite the numbers, the prices for these aren’t going down but they’re getting more expensive as people get to know them and how comfortable they are for regular use.
The Nikon S2 is a beautiful machine because of all the big dials and the nice silhouette. It’s probably the sexiest Nikon rangefinder camera in my opinion specially if you mate it with a good-looking compact lens. It only comes with a 50mm viewfinder, a standard for its day but it’s life-size and very bright. I love how you don’t have to squint because of it since what you see on both of your eyes is the same magnification. It’s not parallax-corrected, which is a missed-opportunity. If you need to shoot with a different focal length you will need one of Nikon’s many external finders such as the one you see here.