Glass Bodies a variant-level encyclopedia of vintage lenses and cameras by iwillpat

Nikon EL2

Nippon Kogaku · Nikon F mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back · 1977

Also known as: Nikon EL-2 · Nikon EL 2 · ニコンEL2

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Nikon EL2 Nikon F 1977–1978 — No figure published
  1. No production figure has been published. mikeeckman.com, reviewing the camera in 2020, reports finding no estimate either, and this project found none.
  2. No serial-date table has been published for the EL2 or for any Nikkormat.
  3. Nikon's list of what changed from the ELW is short and worth having whole: CdS photocell to silicon photodiode, a new −1 to +2 EV exposure compensation ring, film speeds to ISO 3200, eight seconds added to the shutter range, an automatic flash sync contact, and a reshaped self-timer lever that also works as an exposure memory lever.
  4. The film speed scale runs from ASA 12, as Nikon's own EL2 instruction manual sets it out. Ken Rockwell's review gives the range as ASA 10–3200; the manual is the stronger source and the figure here follows it. The predecessor scale, for comparison, ran 25–1600.
  5. Published weights differ because the basis differs, not because the sources disagree. 773g is the body alone, the figure Nikon's specification carries and the one mikeeckman.com repeats alongside 993g for body and 50mm lens together. Casual Photophile gives roughly 780g for body and battery, and Ken Rockwell 797g for body, battery and a loaded film.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • 'Nikon' on the pentaprism, on a body that is otherwise a Nikkormat ELW
  • AI meter coupling lever on a ring around the lens flange, and no rabbit-ear prong
  • Exposure compensation ring, −1 to +2 EV
  • Self-timer lever reshaped, and doubling as the exposure memory lock
  • Collar switch around the shutter release, carried over from the ELW
  • Film speed scale running to ISO 3200

Nikon EL2:

  • Nikon on the prism where the Nikomat ELW said EL — the same shell, renamed
  • AI meter coupling lever on a ring around the mount
  • Exposure compensation ring, −1 to +2 EV, which neither the EL nor the ELW has

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back
Finder
Fixed pentaprism, non-interchangeable; fixed Type K screen with 3mm split-image rangefinder, 1mm microprism collar and a 12mm circle marking the meter's centre weighting · no rangefinder image
Shutter
Copal Square, metal blade, vertical travel, focal plane, electronically timed · 8s – 1/1000 stepless on automatic; B and 8s – 1/1000 set manually; 1/90 mechanically with a dead battery · flash sync X at 1/125, on an automatic sync contact · self-timer
Film advance
single-stroke lever, or the AW-1 Autowinder; with the winder fitted the collar switch around the shutter release takes over the power function
Back
hinged
Meter
TTL 60/40 centre-weighted, two silicon photodiodes, match-needle; ISO 12–3200; working range EV 1 to EV 18 at ISO 100 with an f/1.4 lens; one 6V cell (4SR44 or PX28) in the mirror box — the camera will not run on 3V, because the shutter magnet needs the full six
Motor drive
AW-1 Autowinder — The ELW's baseplate coupling and contacts, unchanged. Nikon classed the AW-1 a winder rather than a motor drive because it fires one frame at a time.
Weight
773 g
Dimensions
145 × 93.5 × 54.5 (width × height × depth) mm
Country
Japan
Original price
$637.50 with the 50mm f/2 Nikkor and $831 with the 55mm f/1.2 (United States, 1977), as reported by mikeeckman.com. No price for the body alone has been found.
Accessories
Autowinder AW-1 · Type K focusing screen (fitted, not user-changeable)

Figures we worked out rather than found: Body dimensions are the Nikkormat EL figure, carried across because the EL2 uses the same shell. No separate EL2 measurement has been published.

What reviewers say

History

The EL2 looks like a rebadge and is not. Outwardly it is the Nikkormat ELW with Nikon on the prism and an AI coupling lever around the mount — the 1977 conversion that also turned the F2 Photomic into the Photomic A and the Nikomat FT2 into the FT3. The specification sheet lists one metering change, from a cadmium sulphide cell to a silicon photodiode, and that reads like a detail. Nikon’s own account says it was not: the current a silicon photodiode produces is very small, so the integrated circuit behind it had to be rebuilt from scratch in a Bi-MOS process, roughly 210 bipolar transistors and MOS field-effect transistors together, and with the extra parts came the first flexible printed circuit board Nikon ever put in a camera. Most of the exposure system is new. Only the box around it is old.

The reason for that effort on a camera nobody expected to last is the most candid thing in Nikon’s record of the model. The Nikon FE had already been decided when the EL2 was being designed; it was understood from the start that the EL2 would be short-lived. So the same exposure-control chip was specified for both, which meant it had to run on the EL2’s single six-volt cell and on the FE’s pair of 1.55-volt cells, and the IC makers were asked for a part that worked anywhere from three to six volts. The chip in a 1977 EL2 and the chip in a 1978 FE are the same chip. The EL2 itself will not run on three volts: the shutter magnet needs six.

The rest of the changes are the ones a user notices. An exposure compensation ring appeared, −1 to +2 EV, which the EL and ELW had lacked entirely. The film speed range went out to ISO 3200. Eight seconds went onto the shutter range, five years after the Nikomat EL had reached the same length through an unmarked notch its engineers did not trust. The flash sync contact became automatic, and the self-timer lever was reshaped so that it also holds a meter reading. The AW-1 winder coupling in the baseplate is the ELW’s, untouched.

What it kept was weight. At 773 grams for the body, on a die-cast mirror box and front panel machined as one piece, the EL2 was the last of a way of building cameras that Nippon Kogaku had already abandoned: the FM’s mirror box was assembled from stamped panels precisely because the Nikomat casting could not be put through an automated line. Against the FE, a year later and much lighter, the EL2 offers mirror lock-up and a mirror that can be raised on the self-timer, and very little else.

Nothing has been published about how many were made. It was on sale for about a year, in a market Nikon was already re-entering with two better cameras, and no figure and no serial table exist for it — the same silence that covers every Nikkormat. What survives instead is unusually good documentation of why the camera was built the way it was, written by someone who was in the design department at the time. That is the reverse of the usual position, and it is worth saying plainly: the engineering of the EL2 is on the record and its commercial history is not.

Expand Collapse

This history is AI-written, from the sources listed at the foot of the page. Where the record is silent it says so rather than filling the gap — but no human wrote these sentences.

Photographs

Nikon EL2
Nikon EL2 — Silver Novice of the Wirral, via Flickr (Openverse) (CC BY 2.0)

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $140 across 20 fixed-price listings on 2026-10-19 (middle half $100–$170). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 9 days: up 4% from $130.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-10-19$140$100–$17020
2026-10-18$140$100–$17020
2026-10-17$140$100–$17020
2026-10-16$150$120–$22021
2026-10-15$150$120–$20020
2026-09-21$150$120–$16027
2026-09-18$120$22–$15032
2026-09-08$130$100–$16022
2026-09-06$130$100–$16023

Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.

Show 18 more listings

Buying from Yahoo! Auctions outside Japan. It is a domestic marketplace: sellers ship within Japan, and most will not register an overseas buyer. A proxy service bids on your behalf, receives the item and forwards it, for a fee and a wait. Buyee, Jauce and ZenMarket each accept a Yahoo auction number directly. Listed alphabetically for information — none is recommended over another, and none of these is an affiliate link.

Listings updated 2026-10-19. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Related: Nikkormat EL · Nikkormat ELW · Nikkormat FT3

Sources (7)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this camera, know a serial number I'm missing, or can see where I have it wrong, tell me — corrections, serials and sample photos are all worth having.