Nikon F2 Photomic AS

If a pentaprism head with a built-in light meter was mounted on the F2, the camera became an F2 Photomic. However, since Nippon Kokagu made five different metering heads over the life of the F2, there were five different F2 Photomic versions. The use of any Photomic head requires that batteries (two S76 or A76, or SR44 or LR44) be installed in the F2 body to power the head's electronics.

The DP-12 (introduced in 1977) functioned exactly the same as the DP-3, respectively, except that these heads supported Nikkor lenses with the Automatic Indexing (AI) feature (introduced 1977, see above). Nikkor AI lenses had a "meter coupling ridge" cam on the lens aperture ring that pushed on a spring loaded "meter coupling lever" on the Photomic head to transfer lens set aperture information. AI lenses allowed carefree lens mounting and ended the double twisting that used to allow observers to spot a Nikon/Nikkormat user from a hundred paces. The F2 AS Photomic with DP-12 head was the most advanced F2 version and the chrome version with Nikkor AI 50 mm f/1.4 lens had a US list price of $1278 in 1978. (SLR selling prices were typically 30 to 40 percent below list.)

The F2 AS (DP-12) required the equivalent DS-12 EE Aperture Control Units. These were early attempts by Nippon Kogaku to provide shutter priority autoexposure by having an electric servomotor automatically turn the lens aperture ring in response to the set shutter speed and light meter reading. The DS-1, -2 and -12 were bulky, slow and unreliable, and were feeble and inelegant attempts to add autoexposure to the manual exposure F2.