Nikkor-O 35mm f/2 lens

Nikon lenses

A superb 35mm optic for pennies.

35mm Nikkor-O f/2, with period hood. The CPU is visible on the rear baffle.

The manual focus 35mm f/2 Nikkor-O, from the ‘all metal’ era whose construction quality has never been surpassed, shows moderate vignetting at f/2 and f/2.8 with a small amount of barrel distortion at all apertures. Full resolution is reached at f/4. Contrast is very high. The 8 elements in 6 groups design appears to have remained unchanged in the pre-Ai, Ai and Ai-S versions, spanning December 1965 through August 1981, and testifying to the excellence of the design. Later models, named ‘O.C’, were multicoated; mine is single coated. This lens is fully the equal of any Leitz or Leica 35mm Summicron on a Leica M, regarded by many as the standard at this focal length. Having owned and used 8 element and 6 element spherical Summicrons and the Aspherical model, I can testify to this.

Mine is 1971 vintage and there is one huge difference compared to the Leica optic. The latter will run you $3,200 new and not much less used. My Nikkor was $175 with hood for a near mint version. Another $25 was spent on an Ai conversion and the CPU ran $30 more. The CPU is easily installed with epoxy, directly on the rear baffle. More on CPU installation here. I see very minor diffraction loss at f/16, and slight red fringing at all apertures (you really have to pixel peep to divine that) easily corrected in LR4 by checking the ‘Remove Chromatic Aberration’ box, which I have done in creating my import setup. This means the lens is perfectly useable – and will render huge prints – at any aperture.

I have made a tailored lens profile to correct the minor aberrations in this lens and you can download it here. It works with PS or LR.

Pictures will follow when I have had a chance to wring the lens out. Look here.

Once upon a time ….

Photographs

…. we snapped in monochrome.

Oakland Bay Bridge, D700, 24mm.

Gold Street, Jackson Square. Click the picture for the map. Same hardware as above.

Hotaling Street, Jackson Square. Same gear.

The 24mm Nikkor is special. It was special when I sold them, as a clerk at Dixons in London in 1969, to rich American tourists, and it remains special today, at a fraction of the cost. At that time I was quite convinced that Americans were so affluent that they never had a shirt laundered. They merely threw it away and donned a new one. And that 24mm seemed every bit as remote from that world as I was back then.

Back then the only people who could afford color prints were those self same Americans. Of course, despite all their costly gear, they opted for 3 1/2″ x 5 1/2″ machine made Kodak prints, just like their successors today who think nothing of using a $10,000 camera to publish their work exclusively in 600 pixel sizes on the web. Many of these are the same people lining up to upgrade to a 36mp D800 ….

In 1974, when mine was made, the 24mm f/2.8 Nikkor-N.C ran $316.51, which is $1,472.72 in today’s money. I think I got a bargain at $165 for a mint one.