Nikkor special lenses

Nippon Kogaku K.K. alias Nikon Corporation initially produced rangefinders, gun sights, binoculars and telescopes for marine and military use. Many war planes and battle ships were fitted with optical instruments made by Nikon. Nikon made many lenses for office equipment, too. Fax machines, copiers, surveyor instruments, etc. etc. It is impossible to list all products Nikon made since 1917. Actually nobody - even Nikon itself - knows what has been produced, as factory records are missing or uncovered.

Below you´ll find a few lenses and other optical items which may appear on the second hand market.

Whenever you´ll book your first holiday to the moon you probably may stumble over one or more Nikon cameras and lenses. If you do find a NASA Nikkor-S 1.2/55 mm. (as shown below) please sent your webmaster a postcard!

extremely rare NASA Nikkor-S 1.2/55 mm.

This a Nikkor-O CRT (cathode ray tube) lens, made in the 1970´s to make pictures from oscilloscope screens. This special fixfocus lens has special lenses rendering certain colors. It has a LTM (Leica thread mount) = 39 mm. The effective aperture is about 1.4/55 mm. Lens data on the name ring referring to an aperture measured at infinity and at the lens axis. As soon as a lens is focused to a shorter distance focal length and maximum aperture will decrease. The working distance of this razor sharp lens is approx. 15 cm. Mounted on a bellows you´ll get extremely sharp images. There two versions of this lens: one as shown above, the second version is identical but has an additional engraving (in red) M=1/5.

This R-Aero-Nikkor was produced in the 1940´s for aerial cameras, used by the Japanese air force. Very rare nowadays as many didn´t survived the battle.

This tiny lens isn´t that rare as some 80,000 were produced in the 1960´s. Most of these Cine-Nikkors are fitted on Revere 8-mm movie cameras. Nikon produced many lenses for various movie cameras (8 - 16 - 35 - 70 mm. cameras) and for (stationary - studio) TV-cameras. The latter are hard to find on the secondhand market.

an early (1960´s) but relatively fast TV-Nikkor 0.9/35 mm.

Just after W.W. II Nippon Kogaku was trying to market a twin reflex camera (alike the famous Rolleicord/flex-series), but decided not to step into that gap. A few models - of course with Nikkor lenses - were sold.