Nikon Nikkor

Name: Nikon Nikkor
Brand: Nikon

High-Fidelity (July 1982, p.42) covered the shift toward home video products. It noted that a new photo company was offering a camera designed to show 35mm color film negatives on a television screen in sharp, accurate color.

Overview

The brand covers a huge spread of optics, not a single product. The material here describes a range running from a 6mm Fisheye Nikkor to a 2000mm Reflex Nikkor, with more than 45 lenses in the system at the time of the Nikkormat FT2. In between sat 16 wide-angle Nikkors, 3 normal lenses, 15 telephotos and 7 Nikkor Zooms, plus lenses built for closeup work and other special applications. That's a catalogue, not a model, which is why "Nikkor" gets talked about as a family.

The mount and the maker tie them together. These are the same lenses used with the Nikon camera, and because the system was designed around interchangeability, a Nikkormat FT2 buyer could move up to a Nikon body later and keep the same glass and most of the same accessories. Nikon's own literature called this "progress without obsolescence." That's a marketing line, but the mount's longevity has largely backed it up.

Nikon's optical claim for Nikkor was not modest. Company material describes them as preferred by top professionals over all other 35mm optics for sharpness and color rendition. It also notes that Nikon not only designed and built every Nikkor but produced the optical glass itself, in more than 220 varieties. Most of the line carried Nikon's multiple-layer Integrated Coating (IC), which the literature credits with enhancing the lenses' inherent performance. You can take the "world's finest" framing or leave it, but the vertical integration is real and unusual. Very few lens makers of the era ground their own glass.

Two design details show up across the line. Most Nikkor lenses accept the same 52mm filters, so a photographer's filter set carried over from lens to lens instead of being duplicated. And the line spanned the full focusing range: some Nikkors focused from infinity down to life-size, alongside lenses built expressly for closeup and macro work. The Fisheye Nikkors covered a 220° picture angle, wide enough to see objects behind the camera. The 2000mm Reflex Nikkor delivered roughly 40X magnification against a normal 50mm.

For collectors, the trouble with "Nikkor" is that it won't give a single verdict. Condition, coating, mount generation and the specific focal length all matter far more than the name on the barrel.