Did photographer John Free use aperture priority mode?

[wiltw]

Procedure 2) is the long way and more operations required. He's making the shutter speed the priority, but using aperture priority afterwards to get to that setting. He should set it on shutter priority at a 1/500. And then the aperture automatically sets to the correct exposure with no further adjustments.

The F3 does not have Shutter-Priority automation; it offers Aperture-priority and full manual control.
Fee apparently was using his camera in a manner which suited his thinking, Shutter priority,

 

[Lachlan Young]

I select the Aperture, and with the shutter speed set to A, I then change selected aperture until 1/500 is the automatically selected speed that is indicated by the meter

The camera is clearly set to 'A' in the footage I mentioned above.

the long way and more operations required. He's making the shutter speed the priority, but using aperture priority afterwards to get to that setting. He should set it on shutter priority at a 1/500. And then the aperture automatically sets to the correct exposure with no further adjustments.

The F3 displays the shutter speed in the finder. For some people it may feel faster to work that way. It also eliminates fiddling with the shutter dial which is not terribly well located.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

No shutter priority. Now it makes sense.

 

[benveniste]

All Nikons with any coupled meter had "A" ("many said it was 'automatic', but it stood for f-stop, or as some would say, 'aperture'") until the FA. So, unless he was using a meterless F or F2 the Nikon body had aperture-priority mode.

The Nikon FM and FM2 did not have aperture-priority mode.

 

[Dr. no]

The Nikon FM and FM2 did not have aperture-priority mode.

And they did not have a coupled meter...FM=manual.

 

[Lachlan Young]

And they did not have a coupled meter...FM=manual.

They have fully coupled TTL metering that indexes aperture to shutter speed, just no auto exposure mode (that would require electronic shutter control). Same deal with most of the Photomic metering heads (there were two that were coupled between lens and shutter but not TTL) on the F/F2.