Nikkor-P 600mm f/5.6 (lens head + Bronica focusing unit)

The 600mm f/5.6 is the second of the four Nikon F lens heads that Bronica sold on its own focusing unit, and on a 6×6 frame it gives, in shiura.com’s comparison, the angle and aperture of a 300mm f/2.8 on 35 mm. Nikon released the head in 1964 for the Tokyo Olympics, to Yoshiyuki Shimizu’s design: five elements in four groups, f/5.6 to f/22, a built-in hood and a 122 mm filter thread, with no focusing ring and no diaphragm of its own, since both live in the unit behind it. On a Bronica the unit is Bronica’s, mounting on the new large bayonet of the C and later bodies once the standard helicoid is removed, and the specification list reproduced on Monaghan’s page calls the pair the “600 mm Tele-Nikkor with focusing mount”: 7.3°, 11 m minimum focus, 3.8 kg. Japanese Wikipedia confirms that the head is common to the Nikon F and that the aperture is the unit’s automatic diaphragm, and shiura.com adds that Bronica supplied the 600 as a single lens rather than as a head to be bought from Nikon.

The unit it shares with the 400 is scaled for the 400, f/4.5–22, so the first third of a stop on the ring does nothing on this head; the diaphragm is otherwise fully automatic, and the EC-TL and EC-TL II give aperture-priority automation with it through their instant stop-down metering, metering being stop-down in any case. Two Bronica units exist, one for the D and S cameras that later came with an adapter for the C and later, and one for the C and later only; both take all four heads if the distance scale is changed to match. Bronica’s accessory list includes a rifle-style grip for the 400 and 600. The head never had ED glass: Nikon moved the 600, 800 and 1200 to ED in 1975, and Seiden notes that the ED heads, which Bronica never sold, nonetheless fit the older Bronica unit. shiura.com, who has used the head, reports colour fringing at high-contrast edges, which is what a five-element 600 of 1964 without special glass would be expected to show.

No review of the head on a Bronica has been published, and no price or production figure has been found; Monaghan’s history lists the Bronica 600 among the Nikkors of 1961–65, in agreement with Nikon’s 1964. The market sees it occasionally. Monaghan’s page carries a photograph of an S2-mount 600 from an eBay sale of April 1998, and in October 2026 Blue Moon Camera in Portland offered a Nippon Kogaku 600mm f/5.6 Nikkor-P for the Bronica S, head and unit, working, at US$1,400. A buyer should confirm that both halves are present and that the unit’s scale is the one for this head, and should expect to carry a tripod that will hold nearly four kilograms at 600 mm.