Nikkor is the lens division of the famous japanese manufacturer NIKON(formally known as Nippon-Kogaku until the late 1960's due to a lawsuit between Zeiss Ikon and Nikon who tend to both use the "ikon" prefix..) Anyway...
back in the 50's the photography industry standard was the Kodak 24x36mm format and in this domain the Rolls Royce was the Leica M3 (understand every pro photographer had a M3! Nikon such as almost every other companies like Voigtlander, Canon, Zeiss Ikon or Rollei were far behind either in term of quality but even in term of reliability, which is more critical for photo-journalists!
And that is were in 1957 Nippon-Kogaku found it's way by develloping a very, very robust and reliable 35mm camera : the Nikon SP. But more than anything else what changed Nikon destiny is the 1959Nikon "F System".
The Nikon F wasrevolutionnaryon many points because it combined all the bests options in one SLR body.
During the next decade in the 1960's, the Nikon F-system was the system of choice for any photo-reporter, especially those covering theVietnam war. Even the NASA used the F-system to record the lauch of the Gemini and Apollo rockets (just stop and think about it theNASAan american governement agency using some equipement made in Japan who got defeated 15 years earlier, and against which the USA sent two nuclear bombs!! That's how good the F-system was!
"The Nikon F completely eclipsed everything else in its time! Professionals switched from the Leica M's (and everything else) to Nikon F's in legions, and to this day Leica has never recovered."
Nippon-Kogaku quickly felt the need to develop some high end lenses to fit on this camera! The Japanese firm position was clear: they had to make lens as good as the germans were doing! (understand here as good as Leica and Zeiss).
Nikon then spent alot in R&D to create its own optical designs and introduced some very innovative technologies and components (like the use of radioactive Thorium for the coating on some very high end lenses, or the Rear-focusing CRC designs that are now very commons on high quality lenses. Well it all comes from that era! In a few years Nikon came out with some astonishing lenses to fit this body, built as rock and ready to rock in the most difficult conditions (think about Vietnam War!)
Some of them being so good they were later adapted by Stanley Kubrick forThe Shining to be mounted on the Arriflex camera and used as Cine-Telephoto lenses.
I own two sets of vintage Nikkors the "Pre-AI" (all from 1969 to 1973) and the AI-S (1977 to late 80's)
unless specified the lenses below are pre-AI
Nikkor is the lens division of the famous japanese manufacturer NIKON(formally known as Nippon-Kogaku until the late 1960's due to a lawsuit between Zeiss Ikon and Nikon who tend to both use the "ikon" prefix..) Anyway...
back in the 50's the photography industry standard was the Kodak 24x36mm format and in this domain the Rolls Royce was the Leica M3 (understand every pro photographer had a M3! Nikon such as almost every other companies like Voigtlander, Canon, Zeiss Ikon or Rollei were far behind either in term of quality but even in term of reliability, which is more critical for photo-journalists!
And that is were in 1957 Nippon-Kogaku found it's way by develloping a very, very robust and reliable 35mm camera : the Nikon SP. But more than anything else what changed Nikon destiny is the 1959Nikon "F System".
The Nikon F wasrevolutionnaryon many points because it combined all the bests options in one SLR body.
During the next decade in the 1960's, the Nikon F-system was the system of choice for any photo-reporter, especially those covering theVietnam war. Even the NASA used the F-system to record the lauch of the Gemini and Apollo rockets (just stop and think about it theNASAan american governement agency using some equipement made in Japan who got defeated 15 years earlier, and against which the USA sent two nuclear bombs!! That's how good the F-system was!
"The Nikon F completely eclipsed everything else in its time! Professionals switched from the Leica M's (and everything else) to Nikon F's in legions, and to this day Leica has never recovered."
Nippon-Kogaku quickly felt the need to develop some high end lenses to fit on this camera! The Japanese firm position was clear: they had to make lens as good as the germans were doing! (understand here as good as Leica and Zeiss).
Nikon then spent alot in R&D to create its own optical designs and introduced some very innovative technologies and components (like the use of radioactive Thorium for the coating on some very high end lenses, or the Rear-focusing CRC designs that are now very commons on high quality lenses. Well it all comes from that era! In a few years Nikon came out with some astonishing lenses to fit this body, built as rock and ready to rock in the most difficult conditions (think about Vietnam War!)
Some of them being so good they were later adapted by Stanley Kubrick forThe Shining to be mounted on the Arriflex camera and used as Cine-Telephoto lenses.
I own two sets of vintage Nikkors the "Pre-AI" (all from 1969 to 1973) and the AI-S (1977 to late 80's)
unless specified the lenses below are pre-AI
