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

Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8

Nippon Kogaku · Nikon F · 1979 · Gauss type, with close-range correction

our own finding

Also known as: Ai Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 · Ai-S Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 · AI-S Micro Nikkor 55mm F2.8 · Micro-Nikkor 55mm 1:2.8 · AF Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 · Nikon Micro 55mm f/2.8 · MICRO-NIKKOR 55mm 1:2.8 · マイクロニッコール 55mm F2.8

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Ai-S Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 Nikon F (Ai-S) 1979–2020 179041 – 601232 (422,192) — the long block, December 1979 onward
700001 – 752406 (52,406) — to 2005
800001 – 814603 (14,603) — the 2006 numbering scheme, to 2020 		489,201 across the three blocks — arithmetic on Vink's quantities, not a published total¹
Ai-S Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 NASA Nikon F (Ai-S) 1985–1985 1001 – 1016 (16) — a serial series of its own, four digits, unconnected to the commercial blocks 16
AF Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 Nikon F (AF, screw-drive) 1986–1989 200001 – 240563 (40,563) — September 1986 to November 1989, the whole run 40,563
  1. Vink's quantity column is, in his own words, "Number of lenses made based on serial numbers collected" — derived from observed serial spans rather than factory records. Sums across blocks are arithmetic performed here and are marked as such.
  2. Vink types the entire manual-focus run Ai-S from December 1979. Nikon's own Thousand and One Nights calls the lens the "Ai Micro Nikkor 55mm f/2.8" in the titles of Tales 25 and 26. The Ai-S specification was not introduced across the Nikkor line until 1981, so the two labels cannot both describe a lens sold in 1980; no source consulted here resolves which barrels carry the Ai-S aperture linkage and which do not.
  3. Nikon's Tale 26 names Yoshinori Hamanishi as the designer and describes the change from the Xenotar of the f/3.5 to a Gaussian type, but gives no element or group count. The 6/5 figure is Vink's specification table.
  4. No list price for any version has been found in the sources consulted, in yen or in dollars.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • A genuinely new optical design, not a faster version of the f/3.5. Nikon changed structure from Xenotar to Gauss to get the extra stop, and added a floating element to hold correction at close range — the first Micro-Nikkor with one.
  • Manual or autofocus in one glance at the front: 52mm filter and 290g is the Ai-S, 62mm filter and 420g is the AF
  • Neither version is the 60mm. The AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8 of 1989 that succeeded it is eight elements in seven groups and a different lens; sellers routinely file them together

Ai-S Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8:

  • Barrel engraved MADE IN JAPAN, three cross-head mount screws
  • Seven blades, minimum aperture f/32, 310° of focus travel, 52mm filter, 290g
  • Stops at 1:1.9 alone; 1:1 needs the PK-13 tube

Ai-S Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 NASA:

  • Metal focus ring in place of the rubber grip
  • Distance scale in feet only

AF Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8:

  • 62mm filter where every manual version takes 52mm — the single quickest way to tell them apart
  • Reaches 1:1 with no tube, on a barrel that telescopes to about twice its length
  • 74mm across, 74mm long, 420g — half again the weight of the Ai-S
  • 225° of focus travel against the Ai-S's 310°, and a plastic exterior where the Ai-S is metal
  • Takes the HN-22 hood; the manual versions take HN-3

Serial-range notes

179041 – 601232
A single Vink block of 422,192 numbers, the largest he records for any Micro-Nikkor. It spans roughly a quarter of a century of production with no recorded internal break, which is why serial number gives almost no dating traction on this lens.
1001 – 1016
The NASA lenses run in their own four-digit series. A four-digit serial on a 55mm f/2.8 is therefore not a low commercial number; it is a different object entirely.
800001 onward
Nikon's 2006 renumbering. A 55mm f/2.8 with an 8xxxxx serial was built in 2006 or later, at the very end of a run that began in 1979.

Specifications

Formula
Gauss type, with close-range correction
Designed by
Hamanishi Yoshinori — computed the Gauss-type optical system with its floating element
Construction
6 elements / 5 groups
Aperture range
f/2.8–f/32
Diaphragm blades
7
Min. focus
0.225 m
Dimensions
63.5 × 62 mm
Weight
290 g
Filter
52 mm
Years manufactured
1979–2020
Country
Japan
Coating
Nikon Integrated Coating throughout the run; no coating change is recorded in the sources consulted

What reviewers say

Optical Ratings

Aggregated from the reviews above — follow the links for the full picture.

Chromatic aberration
visible wide open
Distortion
minimal

History

This is where the Micro-Nikkor stops being the same lens. From 1956 to 1979 every 50mm and 55mm Micro-Nikkor carried Zenji Wakimoto’s Xenotar — five elements in four groups, and unaltered for eighteen years in the F mount. When Nikon’s optical department was told to produce a faster one, it concluded the old structure would not go there, and Yoshinori Hamanishi computed a Gauss type instead: six elements in five groups, one of them floating. Nikon’s own account gives the reasoning plainly — the Gaussian form offered “advantages of applicability for higher apertures and less close-range aberration fluctuation” than the Xenotar, and the floating adjustment is what “made the life-size shot practicable”.

It arrived in December 1979 and was still being sold around 2020. Vink’s serial blocks make the scale of that run visible in a way prose cannot: one continuous block of 422,192 numbers, then 52,406, then 14,603 under Nikon’s 2006 renumbering. Roughly 489,000 manual-focus lenses, on a design that never changed. The consequence for anyone holding one is that the serial number dates it barely at all: a six-digit number between 179041 and 601232 could have been made at any point across about twenty-five years.

The autofocus version of September 1986 kept the six elements and moved everything else. The filter went from 52mm to 62mm, the weight from 290g to 420g, the barrel from metal to plastic, and — the point of the exercise — the lens reached life size with no extension tube, where the Ai-S stops at 1:1.9 and needs the PK-13. It sold 40,563 in three years and two months and was then replaced by the 60mm f/2.8, an eight-element design that is not this lens at all. Richard Haw, who rates the Ai-S “one of Nikon’s masterpieces”, declines to recommend the autofocus 55 to anyone.

Two footnotes belong to the collector rather than the photographer. Sixteen lenses exist with four-digit serials from 1001 to 1016, built in 1985, with metal focus rings and distance scales in feet only; Vink files them as NASA lenses and says nothing more, and nothing consulted here establishes what they were for. And the oily iris this lens is famous for is not an iris fault: the grease migrates out of the helicoids under gravity, which is why Haw’s advice is to store the lens standing on its mount.

What remains unsettled is the name. Vink types the whole manual run Ai-S from December 1979, but the Ai-S specification did not reach the Nikkor line until 1981, and Nikon’s own Thousand and One Nights calls the lens the Ai Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 in the titles of both tales devoted to it. Somewhere in the first two years of that 422,192-number block the aperture linkage presumably changed, and no source consulted here says where. No list price has been found either, in yen or in dollars, for a lens Nikon sold for four decades.

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 Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8
Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 (BastienM) — BastienM, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Sample photo taken with the Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8
Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 Ai-S (Daft racer) — Daft racer, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Sample photo taken with the Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8
Hotel Marcel, New Haven — Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 (Matthew Bellemare) — bellemarematt, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Sample photo wanted — shot with a Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $150 across 47 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $120–$190). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 2 days: unchanged from $150.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-09-11$150$120–$19047
2026-09-06$150$120–$19047

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: Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/3.5 · Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 · Micro-Nikkor 200mm f/4 · Micro-Nikkor 5cm f/3.5

Sources (5)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this lens, 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.