Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 (F mount)
Nippon Kogaku · Nikon F · 1962 · Double Gauss
our own findingAlso known as: Nikkor-S Auto 50mm f/1.4 · Nikkor-S.C Auto 50mm f/1.4 · Nikkor-S·C Auto 50mm f/1.4 · New Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 · Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 K · Ai Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 · Ai-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 · AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D · Nippon Kogaku Nikkor-S 50mm f1.4 · ニッコール 50mm F1.4
Variants & identification
| Variant | Mount | Years | Serial ranges | Production |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5cm f/1.4 prototype · Seven elements in five groups | Nikon F | 1962–1962 | 314101–314102 | 2 |
| Nikkor-S Auto 50mm f/1.4 · Seven elements in five groups | Nikon F | 1962–1973 | 314111–454670 465011–516729 532011–635350 635511–893962 1020001–1256578 | ~790,600 across the five blocks¹ |
| Nikkor-S·C Auto 50mm f/1.4 · Seven elements in five groups | Nikon F | 1973–1974 | 1280001–1613735 | ~333,700¹ |
| New-Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 (K) · Seven elements in five groups | Nikon F | 1974–1976 | 2797021–3004000 | ~207,000¹ |
| New-Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 (revised optics) · Seven elements in six groups | Nikon F | 1976–1977 | 3750401–3884253 | ~133,900¹ |
| Ai Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 · Seven elements in six groups | Nikon F | 1977–1981 | 3940001–4853151 | ~913,200¹ |
| Ai Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 gold · Seven elements in six groups | Nikon F | 1977–1977 | 60001–60150 | 150 |
| Ai-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 · Seven elements in six groups | Nikon F | 1981–2020 | 5100001–5858750 6000001–6024980 | ~783,700 across the two blocks¹ |
| Ai-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 (F3/T) · Seven elements in six groups | Nikon F | 1982–1982 | 8200001–8200300 | 300 |
| Ai-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 (Year of the Dragon) · Seven elements in six groups | Nikon F | 2000–2000 | 0001/2000–2000/2000 | 2,000 |
| AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 · Seven elements in six groups | Nikon F | 1986–1995 | 2000001–2077229 3000001–3067644 | ~144,900 across the two blocks¹ |
| AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D · Seven elements in six groups | Nikon F | 1995–2020 | 4000001–4042800 4500001–4641861 5000001–5025719 6000001–6355954 | ~566,300 across the four blocks¹ |
- Quantities are Roland Vink's per-block figures, derived from serial numbers he has collected rather than from factory records. Vink publishes the blocks; the family total below is this project's arithmetic on them.
- When the optics changed is not agreed. Nikon's own history says the lens "was produced in its original form for 14 years until multi-layer coatings were adopted in 1972 and its optical system was improved in 1976." Vink's specification table puts the change at the second New-Nikkor block, serial 3750401, January 1976 — seven elements in five groups before it, seven in six after. Nico van Dijk's version history, hosted at mir.com.my, instead credits the improvement to the Ai conversion of 1977. And a widely read review of the Ai-S states that the pre-Ai, Ai and Ai-S lenses all share one seven-in-six design, which cannot be reconciled with either. Nikon and Vink agree on 1976 and are followed here.
- No single set of measurements describes this family, so the specification fields carry only what held throughout. Weight fell from 325 g to 250 g, close focus from 0.6 m to 0.45 m, and the count of groups from five to six; those figures live in the variant rows.
- The AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G of September 2008 is eight elements in seven groups on a 58 mm filter thread. It carries the name and none of the optics, and is not treated here as a variant of this family. Vink records about 725,000 of it through 2020 across the general and US serial blocks.
- The lens this one displaced, the Nikkor-S Auto 5.8cm f/1.4 of October 1959, ran barely two years. Van Dijk puts its total at "a mere 39,000."
How to tell them apart
- 52 mm filter thread on every version from 1962 to 2020 — the family never outgrew it
- Marked 50mm, never 5cm, on every production lens; only the two prototypes carry centimetres
- A pre-Ai barrel has a metal aperture ring with a coupling prong and no second aperture scale; an Ai barrel adds the small aperture-direct-readout numbers
5cm f/1.4 prototype:
- Engraved 5cm — the only F-mount 50 f/1.4 marked in centimetres
- One example scaled in feet and metres, the other in feet only
Nikkor-S Auto 50mm f/1.4:
- Nippon Kogaku Japan on the barrel; PAT. PEND. on the earliest examples
- Six aperture blades to about serial 454670, seven from 465011
- Fine and scalloped aperture rings alternate through the early blocks — not a version sequence
- Focuses to 0.6 m; 325 g
Nikkor-S·C Auto 50mm f/1.4:
- C for coated — multi-layer coating, adopted across the Nikkor line in 1972–73
New-Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 (K):
- Rubber focusing grip in place of the scalloped metal ring
- Depth-of-field scale on black; the C suffix is gone from the name ring
New-Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 (revised optics):
- Dash focus index, depth-of-field scale on chrome
- Focuses to 0.45 m; 260 g against the 310 g of the K it replaced
- Front barrel 64 mm across rather than 67.5 mm — visibly slimmer
Ai Nikkor 50mm f/1.4:
- Aperture-direct-readout scale, and the meter prong drilled with two large holes
- Focus index changes from a dash to a dot partway through the run, around serial 4046838
- Two screws appear in the aperture ring above about serial 4269873
Ai Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 gold:
- Its own five-digit serial block, sold with the gold-plated 60th-anniversary FM
Ai-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4:
- Stepped nose; 250 g
- The 6000001 block is the 2006 renumbering, not a new lens
Ai-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 (F3/T):
- Champagne finish, matched to the titanium F3/T
Ai-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 (Year of the Dragon):
- Numbered x/2000 rather than given a serial, and sold with the Year of the Dragon FM2N
AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4:
- First block: plastic focus ring and a twist aperture lock
- Second block from June 1991: rubber focus ring and a sliding aperture lock
AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D:
- D on the name ring: the lens reports focus distance to the body
- Assembly moves to China at the 4500001 block, though some early ones are marked Japan
- Nikkor-S Auto 50mm f/1.4: The mount screws change from three to five at serial 532011, which is the quickest way to separate an early barrel from a late one.
- New-Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 (K): The barrel is new and the optics are not: still seven elements in five groups, focusing to 0.6 m.
- New-Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 (revised optics): The optical redesign, and the point at which the numbers in the catalog stop describing the 1962 lens. Still called New-Nikkor; still pre-Ai. See table note 2.
- Ai-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4: Twenty-four years in one form, and the longest-running single version in the family.
Serial-range notes
- 454670 / 465011
- Six aperture blades give way to seven at the block boundary, April 1966.
- 532011
- Five mount screws and a wider focus ring; Nikon's Ai conversion kit number changes here.
- 1020001
- Name ring reads Nikon rather than Nippon Kogaku Japan, and the meter prong becomes round.
- 3750401
- The optical redesign — seven elements in six groups, close focus 0.45 m, barrel 3.5 mm slimmer.
- 4046838
- Focus index changes from a dash to a dot within the Ai run.
Specifications
- Formula
- Double Gauss
- Construction
- 7 elements / 5 groups
- Aperture range
- f/1.4–f/16
- Min. focus
- 0.6 m
- Weight
- 300 g
- Filter
- 52 mm (0.75 mm pitch)
- Years manufactured
- 1962–2020
- Country
- Japan
- Coating
- Single layer to 1972; multi-layer from the S·C of 1973
What reviewers say
- Martin (phillipreeve.net) (blog) — Sharp enough in the centre at f/1.4 but low in contrast from residual spherical aberration, cleaning up by f/2.8; the reviewer keeps it for the dreamy rendering and the pleasant transitions rather than for resolution, and rates it a capable everyday lens forty years on.
- Kouichi Ohshita (Nikon, NIKKOR — The Thousand and One Nights No.44) (blog) — Nikon's own designer-historian notes the lens is single-coated and needs a hood against stray light, and that its weakest point is bokeh at maximum aperture — ring-shaped backgrounds and rugby-ball highlights at the edges that resolve by f/4.
History
Nikon put an f/1.4 on the Nikon F in 1959, and it was the wrong lens. The Nikkor-S Auto 5.8cm f/1.4 solved the mirror-clearance problem by the crude method of moving the focal length away from 50mm, and it did not solve the optical one: Nikon’s own history admits coma flare in the centre of the frame and curvature of field, and says the 5.8cm was outperformed by the slower 5cm f/2 sitting beside it in the catalog. It lasted a little over two years, and about 39,000 were made.
The replacement took three years. Wakimoto Zenji began the design around 1959, straight after finishing the Nikkor-H Auto 28mm f/3.5, and Shimizu Yoshiyuki worked with him; the answer they arrived at moved one convex meniscus element out of the front group and added one to the rear, a trick carried over from the retrofocus 28mm, where coma correction is the same problem in a different shape. Coma at the centre and field curvature both fell away. The Nikkor-S Auto 50mm f/1.4 reached the market in March 1962 as seven elements in five groups, and it did what the 5.8cm had failed to do — stopped down, it matched the slower lens.
The second thing this lens changed was how lenses were built. Optical glass was melted in pots, and each pot came out with a slightly different refractive index, so a designer recomputed the radii for each batch — Nikon’s term is pot correction, and it was a tax on every lens the factory made. By the 1960s the melts were consistent enough that Nikon could instead fix a tolerance, accept only glass inside it, and stop recomputing. Nikon describes the result plainly as a switch from a hand-made production method to an industrial one, and it happened on this lens because this lens was the one built in volume.
The volume is the point. Adding up Vink’s per-block counts from the 1962 lens to the last AF-D gives roughly 3.88 million, and van Dijk, counting separately, says more than four million. Between those two figures sits every mount generation Nikon shipped: pre-Ai with a coupling prong, multi-coated S·C from 1973, the rubber-gripped New-Nikkor of 1974, Ai in 1977, Ai-S in 1981, autofocus in 1986, and the D of 1995 that reports focus distance to the body. Nine names, one f-number, fifty-eight years.
What the names conceal is where the optics actually changed. It was not at any of the mount transitions. It was in January 1976, in the middle of the pre-Ai New-Nikkor run at serial 3750401, when seven elements in five groups became seven in six, close focus went from 0.6 m to 0.45 m and the lens lost fifty grams. Nikon’s history says the optical system was improved in 1976; Vink’s tables place the change at that block; van Dijk instead attributes it to the Ai conversion a year later, and at least one careful review asserts that pre-Ai, Ai and Ai-S are all one design, which no serial evidence supports. A buyer looking for the 1962 lens should therefore ignore the word Ai entirely and look at the serial number.
Two things remain open. Nobody has published a factory total for any version — every figure here is arithmetic on serial numbers, and Vink says as much. And whether the AF lens of 1986 is optically the 1976 lens is unestablished: the element and group counts match, the specifications match, and no source consulted here states that the prescriptions are identical.
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
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Sample photo wanted — shot with a Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 (F mount)? We'd love to feature it (with credit).
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