Richard Haw's Classic Nikon Repair and Review

Hello, everybody! There’s a Japanese song that goes “赤く咲くのはけしの花　白く咲くのは百合の花” or so, which is the opening lyrics to Fuji Keiko’s (藤 圭子) legendary song “Yume ha Yoru Hiraku” (夢は夜ひらく) which means “My Dream Blooms at Night“. The lyrics translate to “A flower that blooms red is a poppy, if it’s white then it’s a lily“. This means a young girl has two paths, one of modesty or promiscuity. It details the life of a stool pigeon who spends her nights with different men. It is a mature theme with heavy lyrics, something that we don’t get to hear much of these days. That’s why this song is considered a classic. The topic of duality is often spoken about because it’s common to only have one of two outcomes in life. This is also something that’s applicable to a lens in the production line. Would it be destined to become an old collapsible type Nikkor, or will it become part of the upcoming standard which is rigid bodied Nikkors. Its story will be told in this article, but unlike the girl in the song whose life is full of bitterness, this one has a happy life of being sought after by collectors so it doesn’t spend its life going from one owner to another.

Introduction:

This variant of the Nikkor-H•C 5cm f/2 is rare as it’s made within a small batch. No one knew how many of these were made nor the exact dates they were produced. All we know is this is a transitional version that was made around late 1948 to sometime around 1949. This period marks the transition between the older collapsible version produced before 1949 and the standard rigid version that became more common after 1950. Nobody knew that exact story but it’s easy to speculate that Nikon just don’t want to waste the old production version and completely replace it with the new one. A solution had to be found so we get this oddball version. As far as I know, it only appears in Nikon S-mount so you won’t find any of these in Leica mount. There’s also the possibility that some of the ones destined to be fitted to a Leica were modified to the Nikon S-mount in this way. There’s no way to tell so everything’s a wild guess.

Everything is made of metal except for the glass. It’s also heavier compared to the usual rigid type Nikkor-H•C 5cm f/2 because it has extra parts to make it what it is. The quality of the finish is a bit crude when it’s compared to later lenses but it’s definitely better than the ones made immediately after the war. The parts fit together nicely and the screws are all excellent, you can see how beautiful they are. Mine isn’t the best, it has seen better days as you can see from the photo. All of the engravings in the bezel are gone so I had to repaint them later as you shall see.