Hello, everybody! Do you like “Chunking Express“? That’s Wong Kar-Wai’s masterpiece. The cinematography is amazing with its creative use of photographic techniques and clever, but thin layering of its storyline. I like it a lot because the director dared to create this kind of movie. It became a classic, something that many people study today. In celebration of that movie I would like to introduce to you something that produces photos that could fit in that movie’s look. It’s bold, daring and ambitious, signifying the dreams of its designer.
Introduction:
The Nikkor-S 55mm f/1.2 Auto was sold from 1965 to 1974 where the last version is called the Nikkor-S.C 55mm f/1.2 Auto to denote that it has improved coatings applied, the latter is the subject of this article. It was made to give the then-new F-mount an f/1.2-class “normal” lens. However, technical difficulties made it rather difficult not just for Nikon to achieve this and an interim solution has to be made by making the focal-length longer by 5mm, resulting in the 55/1.2 class of lenses. You can read more about that in this article.
The front element is huge in order to gather large-amounts of light. Despite that it still retained a 52mm filter-size which is excellent since it was the old-standard for Nikkors. The iris is 7-bladed which gives better results compared to a 6-bladed one.
A special NASA variant was made and sent to space to take pictures of our ozone layer. It says a lot about the performance of this lens. To read more about space cameras, check this article and scroll to the middle of the article.
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Invest on a pair of really good JIS screwdrivers! I always mention this but people keep on forgetting. You won’t need anything fancy, just buy the right screwdrivers! VESSEL only! More
Richard Haw's Classic Nikon Repair and Review 