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

Nikkor 105mm f/2.5

Nippon Kogaku · Nikon F · 1959 · Sonnar (1959–71), then Xenotar / Gauss-derived (1971–2005)

our own finding

Known as “the Afghan Girl lens”

Also known as: Nikkor-P Auto 10.5cm f/2.5 · Nikkor-P Auto 105mm f/2.5 · Nikkor-P·C Auto 105mm f/2.5 · Nikkor-P.C Auto 105mm f/2.5 · Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 K · New Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 · Ai Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 · Ai-S Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 · AI-S Nikkor 105mm F2.5 · Nikon 105mm f/2.5 · NIKKOR 105mm 1:2.5 · ニッコール 105mm F2.5

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Nikkor-P Auto 10.5cm f/2.5 — pre-AI, Sonnar · Sonnar, 5 elements in 3 groups — Zenji Wakimoto's 1949 rangefinder computation, its rear element shaved to clear the F's mirror Nikon F (pre-AI, meter prong) 1959–1971 120101 – 153462 (33,362) — launch block, April 1959; barrel marked 10.5cm, switching to 105mm at 151316
155001? – 172697 (17,697) — marked 10.5cm again from 155001, and 105mm again from 156907
194011 – 221768 (27,758) — scalloped aperture ring, from December 1966
234011 – 286451 (52,441) — to March 1971 		~131,258 across the four recorded blocks (33,362 + 17,697 + 27,758 + 52,441 — arithmetic, not a published total)¹
Nikkor-P Auto 105mm f/2.5 — pre-AI, Xenotar redesign · Xenotar type, Gauss-derived, 5 elements in 4 groups — Yoshiyuki Shimizu's winter-1966 computation Nikon F (pre-AI, meter prong) 1971–1973 407301 – 473834 (66,534) — the whole pre-AI Xenotar run, April 1971 to 1973
407301 – 408382 — within it, the lenses still engraved NIPPON KOGAKU JAPAN; the next block starts at 408816, so roughly 1,500 numbers²
408816 – 473834 — front ring engraved NIKON 		66,534 for the pre-AI Xenotar run as a whole; Vink gives no separate figure for the NIPPON KOGAKU and NIKON engravings within it
Nikkor-P·C Auto 105mm f/2.5 — multicoated Nikon F (pre-AI, meter prong) 1973–1975 500001 – 571564 (71,564) — 1973 to March 1975 71,564
Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 (K) Nikon F (pre-AI, meter prong) 1974–1977 673101 – 730819 (57,719) — September 1974 to 1977 57,719
Ai Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 Nikon F (Ai) 1977–1981 740001 – 897333 (157,333) — 1977 to September 1981 157,333 — the largest single block in the family
Ai-S Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 Nikon F (Ai-S) 1981–2005 890001 – 1053938 (163,938) — August 1981 to 2005 163,938 — a twenty-four-year run, the longest of any version
  1. Vink's quantity column is, in his own words, "Number of lenses made based on serial numbers collected". Checked against his own start and end numbers, each quantity is the inclusive serial span — end minus start plus one — so it assumes no numbers went unused. It is not a factory total. The sums across blocks are arithmetic performed here, and are marked as such wherever they appear.
  2. Vink gives no separate quantity for the NIPPON KOGAKU-engraved Xenotar lenses; his 66,534 covers 407301 to 473834, both engravings together. 407301 to the next block's start at 408816 is 1,515 numbers, which is where the "roughly 1,500" comes from.
  3. Nikon's own account dates Shimizu's redesign to the winter of 1966 but never says when it reached the market. Vink's serial evidence puts the first Xenotar-type block in April 1971 — more than four years later. Nikon's statement that the new system then ran "34 years" without change is consistent with 1971–2005, so the two sources disagree only about the market date, not the design date.
  4. Richard Haw associates the Gauss-type redesign with the New-Nikkor generation. Vink's blocks place it earlier, inside the pre-AI Nikkor-P Auto run and still under the NIPPON KOGAKU engraving. The serial evidence is the more granular of the two.
  5. No list price for any version has been found in the sources consulted, in yen or dollars.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • The P in Nikkor-P is Nikon's element-count code (Pente, five). The 1971 redesign kept the letter because it kept five elements — what changed was the grouping, three to four.
  • 52mm filter on every version from 1959 to 2005, which is unusual across a forty-six-year run
  • Sonnar or Xenotar in one weighing: 370g, f/22, 1.2m close focus is the Sonnar; 435g, f/32 or f/22, 1m close focus is the Xenotar

Nikkor-P Auto 10.5cm f/2.5 — pre-AI, Sonnar:

  • Front ring engraved NIPPON KOGAKU JAPAN; chrome-and-black barrel, 370g
  • Minimum aperture f/22 and a 1.2m close focus — both change at the 1971 redesign
  • Nine aperture blades on the earliest lenses, six from about serial 124029
  • Vink's mount-screw column reads 0 for the first barrels and five slotted screws from 194011

Nikkor-P Auto 105mm f/2.5 — pre-AI, Xenotar redesign:

  • Black barrel, 435g, minimum aperture f/32, close focus 1m, seven curved blades — every one of those a change from the Sonnar version
  • Takes Ai conversion kit 39 where the Sonnar version took kit 40, which is the cheapest way to tell them apart from a parts list

Nikkor-P·C Auto 105mm f/2.5 — multicoated:

  • ·C after the P: multicoated. Same optics, same barrel as the black pre-AI

Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 (K):

  • Rubber focus grip in place of the metal scallops — the visual break in the whole manual-focus line
  • Still pre-AI: an aperture prong and no ridge, minimum aperture still f/32

Ai Nikkor 105mm f/2.5:

  • Ai ridge on the aperture ring and a second, small aperture scale for the finder's direct-readout window
  • Minimum aperture back to f/22 from the pre-AI f/32
  • Five cross-head mount screws (Vink)

Ai-S Nikkor 105mm f/2.5:

  • Built-in sliding hood: the only version of the lens that has one
  • Three cross-head mount screws where the Ai has five (Vink)
  • Shortest barrel of the black versions at 64mm, and the shortest focus throw at about 140°
  • Super Integrated Coating from about serial 1043xxx

Serial-range notes

120101 – 130893
Earliest barrels marked in centimetres and carrying PAT PEND. Nine aperture blades to about 124029, six after.
151316 – 156907
The engraving alternates: millimetres from 151316, centimetres again at 155001, millimetres again from 156907. Vink records the flip-flop without explaining it, and no source consulted here accounts for it.
407301 – 408382
The only Xenotar-type 105s engraved NIPPON KOGAKU JAPAN. Roughly 1,500 lenses by serial span before the NIKON engraving takes over at 408816 — the scarcest point in a family of some 648,000.
890001 – 897333
Ai and Ai-S overlap here: the Ai's last recorded serial is 897333 and the Ai-S starts at 890001. Serial number alone does not separate the two in that band; the built-in hood does.
1043xxx onward
Vink records Super Integrated Coating on Ai-S lenses from about this point. Richard Haw likewise says the later Ai-S carries better coatings than earlier versions.

Specifications

Formula
Sonnar (1959–71), then Xenotar / Gauss-derived (1971–2005)
Construction
5 elements / 4 groups
Aperture range
f/2.5–f/22
Diaphragm blades
7
Min. focus
1 m
Dimensions
66 × 68.5 mm
Weight
435 g
Filter
52 mm
Years manufactured
1959–2005
Country
Japan
Coating
Single-coated to 1972; multicoated from the P·C of 1973; Super Integrated Coating on late Ai-S from about serial 1043xxx

What reviewers say

Optical Ratings

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

Chromatic aberration
strong wide open
Vignetting
exceptionally low
Flare & ghosting
poor resistance
Distortion
negligible

History

Two lenses have worn this name. The first was not designed for the Nikon F at all. Zenji Wakimoto (脇本善司) computed a five-element Sonnar in 1949 for the rangefinder Nikkors, and when the F arrived in April 1959 the same glass went behind the mirror with its rear element shaved back by about a millimetre to clear the swing. It launched alongside the camera and stayed in production, essentially unaltered, for twelve years — 131,258 lenses across four recorded serial blocks, by the arithmetic of Roland Vink’s database.

Yoshiyuki Shimizu (清水義之), Wakimoto’s student, finished a replacement in the winter of 1966: a Xenotar type, Gauss-derived, still five elements but now in four groups, aimed at the close-range aberration drift that the Sonnar could not shake. Nikon’s own account says the new computation brought better peripheral illumination, spherical aberration and coma. What Nikon’s account does not say is when it reached shops. Vink’s serials do: April 1971, at number 407301, more than four years after the design was signed off. The changeover is legible on the barrel — 370g becomes 435g, f/22 becomes f/32, the close focus tightens from 1.2m to 1m, nine or six straight blades become seven curved ones — and for about 1,500 lenses the new optics shipped inside a barrel still engraved NIPPON KOGAKU JAPAN before the NIKON engraving took over at 408816. Those 1,500 are the scarcest thing in the family.

After that, nothing optical happened for thirty-four years. The design passed through multicoating in 1973, the rubber focus grip of the K in 1974, automatic maximum-aperture indexing in 1977, and the Ai-S of 1981 with its built-in sliding hood, and the five elements never moved. The Ai block alone accounts for 157,333 lenses and the Ai-S for 163,938; add every recorded block together and the family comes to roughly 648,346, which is about three-quarters as many lenses as Nippon Kogaku made Nikon F bodies. No source publishes a total, so that figure is arithmetic performed here, and should be read as the floor it is: Vink counts only serials he has seen or been told of.

The reputation rests on ordinary competence rather than any single spectacular property. Reviewers agree the lens is soft at f/2.5 and excellent by f/5.6, that its longitudinal colour error is real and clears by f/4, that it flares like everything else from the period, and that it vignettes less at full aperture than most modern fast glass. It was the short telephoto most Nikon photographers owned, and one of them, Steve McCurry, had an Ai-S on a Nikon FM2 at Nasir Bagh in 1984.

Two things stay unsettled. Nobody has published a list price for any version, in yen or in dollars, so what the lens actually cost a photographer in 1959 or in 1981 is not on the record here. And the centimetre-to-millimetre engraving flips twice between serials 151316 and 156907 — mm, then cm again, then mm — which Vink records and no source consulted explains.

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 Nikkor 105mm f/2.5
Bay of Kotor — shot on a Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 (spoiltexile) — spoilt.exile, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Sample photo taken with the Nikkor 105mm f/2.5
Isle of the Dead, Perast — Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 (spoiltexile) — spoilt.exile, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Sample photo taken with the Nikkor 105mm f/2.5
Comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon — Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 (chripell) — chripell, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sample photo wanted — shot with a Nikkor 105mm f/2.5? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $180 across 43 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $150–$300). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 2 days: unchanged from $180.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-09-11$180$150–$30043
2026-09-06$180$150–$30043

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: Nikkor-P·C 10.5cm f/2.5 · Nikkor 105mm f/1.8 · Nikkor 85mm f/1.8

Sources (6)

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.