Fix a "Broken" Nikon FG Light Meter

I had found this mint condition Nikon FG at a antique market and soon discovered its odd light meter. Basically the camera was designed so that if film was recently loaded the light meter wouldn't turn on until frame 1 was reached on the counter. However what tends to happen is the switch that controls that degrades over time and or gets dirty and stops working. The fun side effect of which is that it never allows the light meter to turn on!

When that happens the camera will only shoot at 1/90th of a second and you'll see the dots for 1/60th and 1/125th flashing in the viewfinder. According to the manual this means the battery is dead or you haven't advanced to frame 1 yet. Now before you say "check the batteries and counter" I had; the only way I could get the meter to function was to press on the back of the camera where the switch is and that sometimes got it to work... Have you ever had to squeeze your camera to take a photo?

As it turns out, this is pretty common issue and there's a way to fix it; open the camera and solder a wire to bypass the switch. After doing this the camera will always turn on the light meter (bonus tip: put it in M90 mode when not in use to save the battery). Sounds dangerous, but by doing this you're basically telling the camera electronics that the film door is always closed and the counter is past the first few frames so it can turn on the light meter. Actually doing this was pretty easy too, there's a number of Nikon FG disassembly guides/videos that show how to open it up and the contacts you need to solder are right under the hood.

Anyways, just thought I'd share this with you guys as one camera repair shop told me that they'd charge $50 to look at the camera, never mind fix it. They also made a sarcastic quip about how I "can't trust anything I read on the internet" ... <insert heavy sigh here>. For $50 you can buy a moderately used FG, so I figured I might as well try to fix mine and should I break it, I'd buy another one. I know this kind of repair job really isn't worth it for a cheap camera, but I really like the FG! It didn't seem fair that this odd design choice kills it after a few decades. So if you have an FG with a "broken" light meter, you might want to give this hack a try.

TL;DR: "Broken" Nikon FG. Fixed it by soldering a switch closed. A condescending camera repair shop didn't get a $50 consultation fee.

Edit: Realized a photo would be helpful. Here's my Nikon FG with the modified connection, see the black and yellow wires near the counter? You need to solder a bridge between them (use solid copper wire). Don't worry about clipping the wires off, you just need to make the connection.