Richard Haw's Classic Nikon Repair and Review

Hello, everybody! How are you today? The weather is getting colder these days as we are entering into mid-autumn. The migratory bird species have began flying south and this is the season for taking pictures of rare birds! Taking pictures of shy creatures require that you use a long lens that will enable you to take pictures from a distance. Nikon has made many of the world’s best telephoto lenses and I am going to show you how some some of them looked like as prototypes (some weren’t even sold at all!).

This is one fat lens that I would love to own! You don’t get to see this lens much because it was never produced outside of being a prototype. Read this article to see more lenses like this one!

This article is part of the Nikkor Prototypes series, it’s a series that I made comprising of no less than 5 parts because it has so many pictures that putting them all in one article is going to be difficult for me. Please enjoy the rest of the series by clicking on these links:

1. Introduction and Samples
2. Wide and Ultra-wide Lenses
3. Normal Lenses
4. Zoom Lenses
5. Telephoto Lenses

Please check them all out to see everything in their proper context. I could’ve just made it so these lenses aren’t organized but that will make things very confusing for my readers.

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Hello, everybody! I was playing around with the Nikon Z6 with the Nikkor-Z 24-70 f/4S on it and I thought about how much zoom lenses has evolved since the early years. Nikon is a pioneer in zoom lenses in the 1960s and continues to be an important player up to this day. Join me in this part of our Nikkor Prototypes series and see just how far zoom lenses has evolved from simple tubes with cams inside to the all-electronic wonders that we all take for granted today.

This is just one of the lenses that we’ll see in part 4. This table only has a few lenses but it shows some of the more important prototypes in this exhibit in the sense that it shows a bit of “tech” compared to the other tables.

This article is part of the Nikkor Prototypes series, it’s a series that I made comprising of no less than 5 parts because it has so many pictures that putting them all in one article is going to be difficult for me. Please enjoy the rest of the series by clicking on these links:

1. Introduction and Samples
2. Wide and Ultra-wide Lenses
3. Normal Lenses
4. Zoom Lenses
5. Telephoto Lenses

Please check them all out to see everything in their proper context. I could’ve just made it so these lenses aren’t organized but that will make things very confusing for my readers.

More

Hello, everybody! I just woke up from a nap and I had a dream about Nikon giving me an important lens for custody, a prototype 55/3.5 Mirco-Nikkor that’s compact because it has no deeply-recessed front element like what they usually have. My wife woke me up so we can have lunch together and I realized that it’s just my subconscious trying to tell me that I need to write part 3 of our Nikkor Prototypes series. Please enjoy part 3.

Here’s a small preview of what you’re going to see in part 3. This part focuses on normal lenses with focal lengths from 40mm to 60mm or so and the odd Micro-Nikkors thrown-in to the mix to add variety despite not being normal lenses at all. This part of the exhibit is the most interesting for me since most of my lenses fall into this category.

This article is part of the Nikkor Prototypes series, it’s a series that I made comprising of no less than 5 parts because it has so many pictures that putting them all in one article is going to be difficult for me. Please enjoy the rest of the series by clicking on these links:

1. Introduction and Samples
2. Wide and Ultra-wide Lenses
3. Normal Lenses
4. Zoom Lenses
5. Telephoto Lenses

Please check them all out to see everything in their proper context. I could’ve just made it so these lenses aren’t organized but that will make things very confusing for my readers.

More

Hello, everybody! This is part 2 of our Nikkor Prototypes series. In part 1 of this series we got to see a few lenses in the collection but we’re going to see the rest of it in the coming parts. The main exhibit is separated into several parts by focal lenght to make it easier to manage and for the viewer to have some kind of context as to what these lenses are for. I would be really confused if they jumbled everything in one big table and leave it for me to organize them for this article. Please enjoy part 2 of this series.

(Click to enlarge)

This Fisheye-Nikkor 8mm f/2.8 Ai-S is a special lens. If I remember it right, an equidistant projection is where the projected image is “unwrapped” so that the details don’t “pinch” together at the poles or perimeter of the projection. An equisolid projection will do that, it will “pinch” or push the projection towards the edges of the projection veru much like spreading jam over toast so it’s not even. Now, if I understand it correctly, what this lens does is give a wider-angle projection by means of optical correction. I don’t know much more because the description is short and there are no samples. I don’t know what this lens is for and why it was made, I suspect that this was made for scientific research and for data collecting or observation. This is probably a proof-of-concept to see if something like this is indeed possible so a fisheye lens can be made more compact.

This article is part of the Nikkor Prototypes series, it’s a series that I made comprising of no less than 5 parts because it has so many pictures that putting them all in one article is going to be difficult for me. Please enjoy the rest of the series by clicking on these links:

1. Introduction and Samples
2. Wide and Ultra-wide Lenses
3. Normal Lenses
4. Zoom Lenses
5. Telephoto Lenses

Please check them all out to see everything in their proper context. I could’ve just made it so these lenses aren’t organized but that will make things very confusing for my readers.

More

Hello, everybody! I am going to bring to you a long series on the prototype Nikkors that’s currently being-held at the Nikon Museum. It’s a big exhibit quantity-wise but the area it occupies is small due to the size of the specimens shown. I will say that this is one of the more important exhibits that the Nikon Museum made in terms of what’s being shown or its historical significance. Join me in this series and appreciate the long heritage of Nikon in the field of 35mm photography.

(Click to enlarge)

This will greet you as you enter the exhibit. This section of the exhibit showcases pictures (that I cannot show here) that were taken using 10 of the 60 prototype lenses that’s being shown in the exhibit. It’s also a nice touch that they used the new Nikon Z7 for these just to make a point that the new mirrorless Nikon can take lenses that were made during the dawn of the F-mount. It would have been nice to show you these pictures for conext but I can’t because it’s forbidden by the management.

This article is part of the Nikkor Prototypes series, it’s a series that I made comprising of no less than 5 parts because it has so many pictures that putting them all in one article is going to be difficult for me. Please enjoy the rest of the series by clicking on these links:

1. Introduction and Samples
2. Wide and Ultra-wide Lenses
3. Normal Lenses
4. Zoom Lenses
5. Telephoto Lenses

Please check them all out to see everything in their proper context. I could’ve just made it so these lenses aren’t organized but that will make things very confusing for my readers.

More