Like many people, I haven’t always been the biggest fan of Ken Rockwell over the years. But it’s Christmas Eve, and I’m in a relatively festive mood, so here we go. Ken has put out a video on the history of Nikon lenses that’s actually got some quite interesting information about it. It starts way back at Nikon’s beginnings 100 years and goes right up to the modern Z mount lenses.
Nikon was originally formed in 1917 when three leading optical manufacturers of the time merged together to form a fully integrated company known as Nippon Kōgaku Tōkyō K.K. Over the next sixty years, they grew to become a manufacturer of optical lenses for cameras, microscopes, binoculars and inspection equipment. They even made the first lenses for Canon cameras.
In the video, Ken goes through the history of Nikon’s lens mounts from the Nikon SP, the F series and F mount, the AF, D, G lenses, and finally gets onto Nikon’s latest Z mount lenses, with some history on the lens designations. It’s a fairly comprehensive look at Nikon’s history with lenses, although you’ll probably want to fact check a few bits independently.
I’ve always been a fan of Nikon’s F mount, personally, mostly as it allows me to use many of the same lenses with both my fifty+ year old film bodies and my modern DSLRs. It’s nice not having to duplicate kit if you don’t have to.
As I said, I’ve never really been the biggest fan of Ken Rockwell and he definitely posts some… questionable content occasionally. Ok, maybe more than occasionally. But if you can sift through the hyperbolic fluff, there are some interesting bits of info in the above video.
What’s your favourite Nikon lens?
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