Nikkor-P·C 300mm f/5.6 (Bronica)

The Nikkor-P·C 300mm f/5.6 is the least documented of the Nikkors made for the focal-plane Bronicas. Japanese Wikipedia describes it in one line: five elements in five groups, a lens for the new large bayonet of the C and later bodies, and a design made for Bronica alone, with no Nikon F counterpart. Myron Seiden, whose account of the system is the fullest in English, had so little information that he doubted it had been sold at all; the English Wikipedia table carries its construction, its f/5.6–32 scale and its 67 mm filter and leaves the rest blank. The lens-in-hand evidence is a single letter: in June 2000 Michel Porcher wrote to Robert Monaghan that he had bought a mint Bronica-mount Nikkor-P.C 300/5.6 at the Bièvres fair, serial 731xx, multicoated, 153 mm long out of the mount and 181 mm with the hood out, focusing from 4 m to infinity on a scale in metres and feet, with the colour-coded depth-of-field marks of the 1970s Nikon F lenses, a sliding hood, the standard 67 mm thread and a large-bayonet rear cap. He found it surprisingly light and compact and smoother to focus than a Bronica focusing unit.

That description settles what kind of lens it is. The 200 mm Nikkor sits on the small bayonet and focuses through the body; the 400–1200 mm Nikkors are bare heads that screw into a separate Bronica focusing unit. The 300 is a third thing: a complete lens with its own helicoid that mounts on the large bayonet after the body’s focusing unit is removed, the arrangement the English table calls a large-bayonet lens with helicoid focus in the lens, and the one the Zenzanon 300mm f/4.5 also uses. The EC-TL data sheet gives fully automatic diaphragm on every lens but the 800 and 1200, which would include this one, the coupling running through the large bayonet. No weight, price or production figure has been found, and no source dates the lens; the year given here is an inference from the ·C multicoating suffix, the seventies-style scales and the lens’s appearance as a new item against the electronic bodies, and it should be read as such.

For a buyer the lens is a rarity rather than a tool, and the first question is whether a lens offered as a Bronica 300 mm Nikkor is this one. The Nikkor-P Auto 300mm f/4.5 of 1964 is a Nikon F lens with a meter prong and will not mount; the Zenzanon 300mm f/4.5 takes 82 mm filters and weighs 1.8 kg; the Komura 300mm f/5 is a head for the Unihelicoid. A compact 300 with a 67 mm thread, a Nikkor-P·C ring and a bayonet the size of the body throat is the lens described here. Porcher promised Monaghan a photograph and notes on performance; none followed on the page, so how it draws remains unreported.