Glass Bodies a variant-level encyclopedia of vintage lenses and cameras by iwillpat

Nikon L35AF

Nikon · Fixed lens · 24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back · 1983

Known as “Pikaichi”

Also known as: Nikon L35AF · Nikon L35AD · Nikon Pikaichi · Nikon L35AF2 · Nikon One Touch · Nikon AF3 · ニコン ピカイチ · Pikaichi

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
L35AF / L35AD (Pikaichi) 35mm compact 1983 — No figure published
L35AF2 / L35AD2 (One Touch) 35mm compact 1985 — No figure published
AF3 / AD3 (One Touch) 35mm compact 1987 — No figure published
  1. No production figure has been published for any camera in this family. Nikon's own essay on the lens gives the designer's name and two dates from the drawing office and no volumes at all, and no secondary source consulted supplies one.
  2. "Nikon's first autofocus camera" is a claim to make carefully, and Nikon does not make it. The Thousand and One Nights essay calls the L35AF "Nikon's first AF point-and-shoot (lens shutter: also known as compact) camera", and the Japanese text is narrower still — ニコンが初めて作成した、AFコンパクトカメラ, the first AF compact camera Nikon made. The unqualified version collides with the F3AF, which English Wikipedia's F3 article calls "the first autofocus camera to be produced by Nikon, in 1983". Both cameras are 1983, both are routinely called first, and nothing consulted here dates them against each other in a way that settles it — so the entry follows the manufacturer's own qualified wording and leaves the SLR question where the sources leave it.
  3. The claim that the L35AF is a close copy of Canon's AF35M appears in Matt's Classic Cameras and travels from there. Nikon's own account of the lens is a fairly direct answer to it. Sato records that the lens carrying no NIKKOR badge was itself enough to start rumours that Nikon had not designed it, and then sets out what makes it Nikon's: a Sonnar-type configuration rather than the Tessar type he says the compacts of the day mostly used, and a genuine 35mm against what he calls the predominant 38mm of the competition. The AF35M is a 38mm f/2.8. That is not a denial of influence — Nikon plainly entered the market because rivals had made one — but a camera with a different focal length and a different lens type is not a close copy, and the essay is the only first-hand account of the design that exists.
  4. Sato also dates the boom itself, and the date is inconvenient for the Canon story: he puts the surge of autofocus compacts at 1977 and names the camera that started it as the Juspin Konica, which is the Konica C35 AF. The Canon AF35M is 1979. Nikon's essay describes an industry-wide trend Nikon joined six years late, not a response to one rival.
  5. The One Touch badge was used for the L35AF2 and again for the AF3, in different territories and at different times. A camera sold as a Nikon One Touch may be either. The filter thread settles it: the AF2 has none, the AF3 has a 46mm one, and the L35AF has a 46mm one and no barrier over the lens.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • The lens is engraved Nikon, not NIKKOR — the essay says this alone started rumours that Nikon had not designed it
  • 35mm, not the 38mm nearly every rival compact used
  • Angular, slab-sided shell with a ribbed corner and, on some bodies, an oblique stripe

L35AF / L35AD (Pikaichi):

  • A 46mm filter thread around the lens — almost unheard of on a snapshot camera
  • Exposed lens with no barrier; the L35AF2 that followed covers it
  • A backlight-compensation lever adding about two stops
  • Two AA cells in the base

L35AF2 / L35AD2 (One Touch):

  • No filter thread — the lens is protected by an integrated barrier instead, and this is the quickest way to tell an AF2 from an AF or an AF3
  • Sold as the One Touch in some territories, a name later reused for the AF3, which makes the badge alone useless for identification

AF3 / AD3 (One Touch):

  • The 46mm filter thread returns, on a body with a barrier
  • A flash-disable button, which neither earlier model has
  • One 6V CR-P2 lithium cell in place of two AA cells
  • The L35 prefix is gone from the badge in most markets

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back
Finder
Reverse Galilean direct-vision finder with a central autofocus spot and zone symbols — a person, two people, a group and a mountain for infinity — plus a low-light warning · no rangefinder image
Shutter
programmed electromagnetic lens shutter · 1/8 – 1/430, the aperture running f/2.8 to f/17.5 with it; no manual setting
Film advance
automatic motorised wind and rewind
Back
hinged; Autodate versions sold as L35AD, L35AD2 and AD3
Meter
CdS cell in the lens surround, programmed automatic exposure over EV 6 to EV 17 at ISO 100, with a backlight-compensation lever worth about two stops. Film speeds ASA 50–400 on early L35AF bodies and 50–1000 on later ones.
Designed by
Wakamiya Koichi (若宮孝一) — optical design of the 35mm f/2.8; design completed December 1981, mass-production drawings August 1982
Country
Japan
Original price
US$210 at launch in 1983, per Mike Eckman (today $661)
Accessories
46mm filters, on the L35AF and the AF3 but not the L35AF2 · Autodate backs, as the L35AD, L35AD2 and AD3 models rather than as fitted accessories

Where sources disagree

L35AF2, lens formula
  • Five elements in four groups, unchanged from the L35AF — the reading carried by the enthusiast summaries of the family
  • Four elements in three groups — Mike Eckman, who says the simpler lens arrived with the AF2 and was seen as inferior, and the Kamerastore catalogue entry

Better supported: Unresolved

camera-wiki's L35AF2 page gives the lens only as 35mm f/2.8 and states no element count, so it settles nothing. The question decides whether the family has one optical break or two, and it is the single most useful thing a buyer could be told about an AF2. Nothing found here resolves it, and neither figure is carried as fact.

L35AF2, introduction year
  • 1985 — camera-wiki, which footnotes a Nikon page, and Mike Eckman
  • 1984 — given in other accounts of the family's chronology

Better supported: 1985

1985 is the better attested and is carried in years.first, but no document reached here states it directly.

Body design credit
  • Giorgetto Giugiaro — asserted by Casual Photophile's review and repeated across retail listings and enthusiast pages
  • Not credited to anyone — Nikon's own history page for the camera and its Thousand and One Nights essay on the lens both name no industrial designer

Better supported: Not established

The attribution is plausible and unsourced. Giugiaro's documented work for Nikon begins with the F3 of 1980, and the compact shares some of its visual habits, which is exactly the kind of resemblance from which an inference hardens into a credit. No Nikon document consulted names him in connection with the L35AF. He is therefore not listed in designers here, where only Wakamiya's optical credit rests on a primary source.

What reviewers say

History

Nikon spent six years watching the autofocus compact market before entering it. Haruo Sato’s account for Nikon dates the boom to 1977 and names the camera that set it off — the Juspin Konica, which is the Konica C35 AF — and describes staff being pulled out of the SLR design division to work on compacts. What they produced in 1983 was the L35AF, nicknamed Pikaichi, top notch, a name chosen in the hope that the camera would both take the best pictures and sell the most.

The lens is why the camera is still discussed. It carries no NIKKOR badge, which Sato says was itself enough to start rumours that Nikon had not designed it, and then he spends the essay demonstrating otherwise: the optical design was completed in December 1981 by Koichi Wakamiya of Optical Section 1, the mass-production drawings followed in August 1982, and the configuration is Sonnar-type rather than the Tessar type he says the compacts of the day mostly used. Sato’s admiration is specific — a 35mm focal length “is achieved by the Sonnar-Type which is unfit for wide angle lenses by nature”, and the close-range aberration shift that usually punishes the type is corrected out. Five elements in four groups, f/2.8, distortion held near two per cent, and a 46mm filter thread on the front of a snapshot camera.

That essay also answers, without naming it, the claim that the L35AF is a close copy of Canon’s AF35M. The Canon is a 38mm Tessar-type of 1979; this is a 35mm Sonnar-type designed in-house with drawings dated 1981 and 1982; and the trend both cameras belong to started with a Konica in 1977. Influence, certainly. A close copy, no.

A second attribution deserves the opposite treatment. Nearly every enthusiast page, and the Casual Photophile review that made the camera’s English reputation, credits the angular shell to Giorgetto Giugiaro. Nikon’s history page for the camera does not, and neither does the lens essay, and no Nikon document found here mentions him in connection with any L-series compact. Giugiaro did design the F3, three years earlier, and the family resemblance is real enough to explain how an inference becomes a credit. It is not carried here as a fact.

Three cameras make up the family and the differences between them run one way. The L35AF has the five-element lens, the 46mm thread and no lens cover, and changes film-speed range partway through its run from ASA 50–400 to 50–1000. The L35AF2 of 1985 — the One Touch — puts a barrier over the lens and loses the filter thread, and what lens it actually carries is unresolved: Mike Eckman and the Kamerastore catalogue say the simpler four-element design arrived here, the enthusiast summaries say the original five-element lens continued, and camera-wiki’s page for it declines to state an element count at all. The AF3 of 1987 settles that question by being unambiguously the lesser optic — four elements in three groups — in exchange for macro focusing to 0.45 m, a sixteen-step autofocus, a flash that throttles itself inside 0.7 m, and the return of the filter thread.

None of the three has a published production figure. Nikon told the world who designed the lens and when the drawings were issued, and said nothing whatever about how many were made.

Expand Collapse

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.

Example photos

Sample photo taken with the Nikon L35AF
Nikon L35AF — Joe Haupt from USA, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Sample photo taken with the Nikon L35AF
Nikon L35AF — MARCO POLIMENI from Rome, Italy, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
Sample photo taken with the Nikon L35AF
Countryside — shot on a Nikon L35AF (madras91) — madras91, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Sample photo wanted — shot with a Nikon L35AF? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $180 across 28 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $130–$200). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 2 days: unchanged from $180.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-09-11$180$130–$20028
2026-09-06$180$130–$20026

Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.

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Listings updated 2026-09-11. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Related: Nikon 28Ti · Olympus mju-II · Yashica T series

Sources (9)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this camera, know a serial number I'm missing, or can see where I have it wrong, tell me — corrections, serials and sample photos are all worth having.