The grip is just the right size to catch your third and fourth fingers and makes it easy to grab the camera securely. The FA is available with a small removable grip that screws onto the front right of the body. It is not as small as the (mechanical) Contax S2, Pentax MX, or even the Olympus OM-3, which are considered small compact bodies and sometimes feel a bit too small to get a good grip.
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Its size is large enough to hold securely, but still smaller than full size professional bodies like the F2AS or F3HP. The body size is not too big or too small. I find the size and weight of the FA to be excellent, especially with wide-angle through medium telephoto Nikkor manual focus prime lenses. The FA is built with a copper-aluminum-silicon (copper-silumin) alloy body, the same as the the other members of the FM/FA series, even though the top and bottom covers are composite material. Since new replacement electronic components are no longer available, should a critical part break down, your repair tech may need to cannibalize another FA sample, else the FA might become a paperweight. Naturally, the sophisticated functionality of the FA requires more electronic circuitry that its predecessors in the FM/FE series. However, Nikon quickly fixed this problem on future production and also repaired defective early models under warranty. I have heard that early samples of the FA had problems with electrical interference affecting exposure accuracy. My FA has been to the shop a few times for regular maintenance, but it has thankfully never experienced any breakdowns. Anyway, today virtually all cameras are covered in some type of composite material, so from a modern standpoint, the FA's cover material seems completely normal. Although it is somewhat disconcerting to hold a non-metallic body for the first time after having used all-metal bodies for so long in prior generations, as a practical matter, you can hardly tell the difference. However, if you look very closely and tap the covers, you can tell that they are not metal. On superficial inspection, the top and bottom covers almost appear to be metal and look very nice. Although the chassis of the FA is metal like the rest of the FM/FE series, the top and bottom covers are made out of composite material. The FA was available in silver chrome and black. Thus, the FA is important even today as both a historical landmark for Nikon, and also as an excellent choice for users of manual focus lenses. The FA was in production from 1983 to 1987, after which Nikon replaced both the FE2 and FA with the N8008 (F801) and the advent of auto focus and built-in automatic film winders. As such, the FA offers more functionality with Ai or better lenses than any camera ever made by Nikon.
While the Nikon F4 and F6, as well as some Nikon digital SLRs, can support multi-pattern metering with Ai or better lenses, they don't support full PASM but only Manual and Aperture Priority modes. The FA is the only Nikon camera body ever made that can support both multi-segment exposure metering and all four PASM exposure modes with manual focus Ai or better Nikkor lenses.
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The FA was developed to take advantage of the new AiS series of manual focus Nikkor lenses that supported linear aperture control and more communication with the camera body. However, while the FE2 was an incremental improvement over the FE with a traditional Nikon design, the FA was a test bed for two major new technologies: (1) multi-segment exposure metering (called Automatic Multi-Pattern ("AMP") in the FA, but Matrix Metering on later bodies) and (2) multiple exposure modes including Manual, Aperture Priority, Shutter Speed Priority, and Program (High and Low), known as "PASM"). It is similar to the FE/FM series in that it is built on the same chassis and is approximately the same size and weight.
It was released slightly after the FE2 came to the market. The Nikon FA is the most sophisticated member of the FM/FE series of medium compact Nikon semi-pro 35mm cameras.
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