Nikon F
Nippon Kogaku · Nikon F mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film, removable back · 1959
our own findingAlso known as: Nikon F Photomic · Nikon F FTn · Nippon Kogaku Nikon F · ニコンF
Variants & identification
| Variant | Mount | Years | Serial ranges | Production |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eye-level prism | Nikon F | 1959–1973 | — | No separate figure published |
| Photomic | Nikon F | 1962–1965 | — | No separate figure published |
| Photomic T | Nikon F | 1965–1967 | — | No separate figure published |
| Photomic Tn | Nikon F | 1967–1968 | — | No separate figure published |
| Photomic FTn | Nikon F | 1968–1973 | — | The commonest finder on a late F |
| NASA cameras | Nikon F | 1971–1974 | — | No figure published |
- Nico van Dijk publishes a month-by-month serial matrix for the F, block by block from 640xxxx in March 1959 to 745xxxx in October 1973. It records two things no other source consulted does: that 661xxxx to 669xxxx was never issued to an F, having been reserved for the Nikon S3M rangefinder, and that top plates numbered above 746xxxx went out as repair parts. Anyone dating a body from its serial should use that table rather than arithmetic.
- 862,600 bodies between April 1959 and October 1973 — fourteen years and seven months. That is more cameras than every Leica screw body in this catalog put together, and roughly four times the M3.
- No weight is recorded here, because the F does not have a single one: the body's mass depends on which finder is fitted, and the finders are the point of the camera. James Tocchio gives about 850g for the body he reviewed, and calls it one of the heaviest SLRs of its day.
How to tell them apart
- A titanium-foil focal-plane shutter, where the competition used cloth
- Interchangeable finders AND interchangeable focusing screens — the camera is a system, not a body
- A removable back, inherited from the rangefinders
Eye-level prism:
- A plain pentaprism with no meter — the original finder, and the one collectors want
Photomic:
- An external meter cell in the finder, reading off the front of the camera rather than through the lens
Photomic T:
- Through-the-lens metering — the finder does the measuring, so the camera did not have to be redesigned to get it
Photomic Tn:
- Centre-weighted TTL
Photomic FTn:
- 60% centre-weighted TTL, and semi-automatic maximum-aperture indexing
NASA cameras:
- Modified for spaceflight; flown aboard Skylab
- NASA cameras: An F with the FTn finder and a motor drive was the first 35mm SLR in lunar orbit, on Apollo 15.
Specifications
- Format
- 24×36mm on 35mm film, removable back
- Finder
- Interchangeable pentaprism; metered Photomic finders from 1962, TTL from 1965 · no rangefinder image
- Shutter
- titanium foil, focal plane, horizontal · 1s – 1/1000 and B, mechanical throughout
- Motor drive
- F36, F250 — The F36 was one of the first popular motor drives on any SLR, firing up to 4 frames a second with mirror lock-up; the F250 takes a 250-exposure back.
- Country
- Japan
Where sources disagree
- Total production
- 862,600 bodies, April 1959 to October 1973 — Wikipedia and camera-wiki
- About 1.05 million, March 1959 to October 1973 — James Tocchio, Casual Photophile
- "Well over three-quarters of a million", 1959 to 1973 — Gregory Gross
- "One million cameras … produced between 1959 and 1973" — Nico van Dijk
Better supported: 862,600, the figure both reference encyclopaedias carry
Nippon Kogaku published no production statement, so every figure here is a reconstruction from serial ranges — and van Dijk's serial matrix shows how the high ones are built and why they overshoot. His table runs from the 640xxxx block of March 1959 to the 745xxxx block of October 1973, which is about 1,050,000 numbers, the figure Casual Photophile gives. But the same table marks 661xxxx to 669xxxx as never used, the block having been reserved for the Nikon S3M rangefinder, and top plates above 746xxxx as repair parts. Take those out and about 960,000 numbers were issued to F bodies. So the million-odd figures are serial spans counted without their gap, not counts of cameras. That still leaves roughly a hundred thousand between 960,000 and 862,600, which nothing consulted accounts for.
- Month production began
- April 1959 — Wikipedia and camera-wiki
- March 1959 — Casual Photophile; and Nico van Dijk, whose serial matrix is headed "The Nikon F bodies were produced from March 1959 till October 1973" and whose first block is dated 3/59
Better supported: March 1959 for production; April 1959 is a claim about a different event
This one is probably not a disagreement at all. van Dijk's figure comes from a month-by- month table of serial blocks, which is a record of when bodies were built; the April date belongs with the camera's introduction, which is what the reference works are dating. Both can be true, and the entry's announcement date is left at April. It is worth noting that Casual Photophile no longer stands alone on March: van Dijk reaches it independently, from the serials.
What reviewers say
- James Tocchio (Casual Photophile) (blog) — Calls it a machine made by obsessive engineers for the most exacting photographers and Nikon's best 35mm SLR, then names the weak links plainly: at about 850g it is one of the heaviest SLRs going, the finder is "spartan" and "one of the F's weakest links", the Photomic shows nothing beyond a tiny needle and most of those meters are dead by now, and the entire back has to come off to load film.
- Jim Grey (Down the Road) (blog) — Went looking specifically for the plain unmetered prism because he thinks the F only looks right that way, and rates the sturdiness, the weight and smoothness of the controls and the F-mount compatibility as still making it a terrific choice; his one real complaint is that Nikon "hadn't nailed down film loading", since the whole back and bottom lift off, and he calls the camera heavy but not wearying over a half-hour walk. Serial-dates his own body to between February and June 1963.
- Gregory Gross (blog) — Shoots a 1965 body with the plain prism, which he prefers to the Photomic as simpler, lighter and better-looking, and calls the F the "it" camera of its era; the complaints are all practical — the fully detachable back makes changing film in the field awkward, 1/1000 is not enough shutter for fast film in bright sun, and the soft brass strap eyelets wear metal on metal. Gives production as well over three-quarters of a million, 1959 to 1973.
- Hern Tan (35mmc) (blog) — A rangefinder photographer's dissent, and the most specific criticism of the four: the plain-prism F focuses slower than his rangefinders, the finder reads as a periscope rather than a window, mirror vibration made everything below 1/30s unusable so he stopped shooting there, and the clack of the mirror announces him to the subject. He keeps it for the removable prism as a waist-level finder and for focusing closer than 0.7m.
History
The Nikon F arrived in April 1959, four months after the Nikon SP — the rangefinder the company had spent a decade perfecting — and made it obsolete. That is the shape of the story: Nippon Kogaku did not lose the rangefinder market to someone else, it took the market off itself.
What the F offered was not a better viewfinder or a faster lens but a system that came apart. The prism lifts off and another goes on; the focusing screen changes; a motor drive bolts underneath; the back comes off for a 250-exposure magazine. None of those ideas was new on its own. Having all of them at once, in a camera built to survive a working photographer, was.
The metering history is the clearest illustration of the idea. The F itself has no meter and never gained one. Instead the meter lives in the finder: the Photomic of 1962 reads light off the front of the camera; the Photomic T of 1965 reads it through the lens; the FTn of 1968 does it centre-weighted at 60% and indexes the maximum aperture semi-automatically. Three generations of metering technology, and the camera underneath never changed.
862,600 bodies were built between April 1959 and October 1973 — more than every Leica screw-mount camera in this catalog combined, and about four times the M3. Nippon Kogaku never published a total, so that number and the million-odd figures set against it are all reconstructions from serial blocks, and the ones near a million appear to be spans counted without their gap: Nico van Dijk’s serial matrix records nine blocks in the middle of the run, 661xxxx to 669xxxx, that were held for the Nikon S3M rangefinder and never issued to an F at all. Take them out and the span is worth about 960,000 numbers, which is nearer 862,600 but not equal to it. By the end of that run the professional 35mm camera was a Japanese SLR, and it stayed that way.
An F with an FTn finder and a motor drive went to the moon with Apollo 15, and modified Fs flew on Skylab. The mount it introduced is still on Nikon’s cameras: a 1959 Nikkor will meter on a body made sixty years later, which is a claim no other maker can make.
This history is AI-written, from the sources listed at the foot of the page. Where the record is silent it says so rather than filling the gap — but no human wrote these sentences.
Photographs
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Live listings
Asking price, USD: a median of $160 across 17 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $99–$210). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 2 days: unchanged from $160.
By day
| Date | Median | Middle half | Listings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-11 | $160 | $99–$210 | 17 |
| 2026-09-06 | $160 | $99–$210 | 18 |
Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.
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