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

PC-Nikkor 28mm f/3.5

Nippon Kogaku · Nikon F · 1981 · Retrofocus, 9 elements in 8 groups, 11mm of shift

our own finding

Also known as: PC-Nikkor 28mm f/3.5 · PC Nikkor 28mm F3.5 · Nikon 28mm f/3.5 shift · PCニッコール 28mm F3.5

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Prototype, chrome shift knob Nikon F 1978 104741 (the only example Vink has recorded) 1 (Vink)
Prototype, black shift knob Nikon F — 100101–100102 2 (Vink)
PC-Nikkor 28mm f/3.5 Nikon F 1981–2005 179121–214178 (Vink dates the block October 1980 – December 2005) 35,058 (Vink)
  1. The construction is nine elements in eight groups. Nikon's own English translation of Thousand and One Nights No. 17 gives "8-group, 10-element" for this lens; the Japanese original reads 8群9枚 — eight groups, nine elements — which is what Nikon's product page and Vink both publish. The English figure appears to be a translation error and is recorded here so it is not mistaken for a second source.
  2. Nikon dates the release to February 1981. Vink's serial block opens in October 1980. The gap is consistent with production preceding sale, but no source says so.
  3. The 35,058 figure is Vink's arithmetic on the serial span. Nikon has published no production figure.
  4. ¥136,000 is the price on Nikon's discontinued-product page for this lens. No year is attached to it, and no dated 1981 price has been found.
  5. The New PC-Nikkor 28mm f/4 of July 1975 is a different lens, not an earlier variant: ten elements in eight groups, 410g, 140° focus throw, and a whole third of a stop slower.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • A 92° covering angle against the 74° the film actually sees — the surplus is what the shift spends
  • 11mm of shift off axis, the direction rotatable through 360° in 30° steps
  • A preset diaphragm, metered stopped down and centred before the lens is moved

Prototype, chrome shift knob:

  • Chrome shift knob — the production lens has a black one
  • A 1047xx number, in the block Nikon used for pre-production lenses

Prototype, black shift knob:

  • Production-style black knob on a 1001xx number, outside the production block entirely

PC-Nikkor 28mm f/3.5:

  • Black shift knob; three cross-head screws in the mount
  • 72mm filter thread and the HN-9 hood, shared with the 28mm f/4 it replaced
  • 95° focus throw, against 140° on the f/4
  • 380g against the f/4's 410g — the weight saving Nikon credits to the barrel designer

Serial-range notes

179121–214178
One unbroken block for the whole twenty-five-year run. Nikon states the multicoating was later improved to Super Integrated Coating; no source gives the serial number at which it changed.

Specifications

Formula
Retrofocus, 9 elements in 8 groups, 11mm of shift
Designed by
Fukino Kunihiro (吹野邦博) — lens barrel design; Nikon credits the lens's weight saving and handling to him
Construction
9 elements / 8 groups
Aperture range
f/3.5–f/22
Diaphragm blades
9
Min. focus
0.3 m
Dimensions
78 × 64.5 mm
Weight
380 g
Filter
72 mm (0.75 mm pitch)
Years manufactured
1981–2005
Country
Japan
Coating
Multicoated at launch; changed to Super Integrated Coating during the run, serial unrecorded
Original price
¥136,000 (Nikon's own discontinued-product listing; year not stated)

What reviewers say

Optical Ratings

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

Chromatic aberration
fringes at shift
Optical formula — Retrofocus, 9 elements in 8 groups, 11mm of shift

Nikon's tale on the PC family carries exactly one cross-section, and its caption ties it to the 28mm f/4 of 1975 — the ten-element predecessor, not this lens. The same page calls this lens eight groups and ten elements in English against the Japanese eight groups and nine, which is a further reason not to infer a layout from counts. The only figure reproduced elsewhere is 83x108 pixels, on which no curvature can be read.

History

A shift lens spends surplus coverage. The film sees 74° through this lens, the way it would through any 28mm, but the lens draws a circle 92° wide, and the extra is what the barrel slides across when the optical cell moves 11mm off axis. That is the whole trade: a lens that has to be built for a bigger format than the one it serves, and then kept free of distortion, because straight lines bent by the glass cannot be straightened by the movement that exists to keep them straight.

Nikon reached 28mm in July 1975 with the New PC-Nikkor 28mm f/4, designed by Mori Ikuo — a large-format and wide-angle specialist, which Haruo Sato says was the point, since deciding how much shift a 35mm lens needed had no precedent and required someone who knew what a view camera does. That lens is not this one. The f/3.5 that replaced it in February 1981 is nine elements in eight groups where the f/4 was ten in eight, a third of a stop faster, 30g lighter, and turned through 95° of focus rotation instead of 140°.

The credit Nikon gives for it is unusual. Sato’s essay ends not with an optical designer but with Fukino Kunihiro, the longest-serving barrel designer in the company, the man other engineers went to when they were stuck, and it names the weight saving and the handling of the PC-Nikkor 28mm f/3.5 as the fruit of his ideas. No optical designer is credited for this lens anywhere Nikon has published. For a lens whose difficulty is generally said to lie in the mechanism, that is either an honest allocation of credit or a gap in the record, and there is no way to tell which.

There is one production version and there was never another. The lens arrived with an Ai-S-era barrel, a preset diaphragm and a black shift knob, and it left in December 2005 with the same barrel, the same diaphragm and the same knob; the only recorded change is a switch to Super Integrated Coating somewhere inside the run, at a serial number nobody has published. Two prototypes survive in Vink’s list — one from about 1978 with a chrome knob, two more in a separate 1001xx block — and then 35,058 lenses in a single unbroken span. That is more than four times what the f/4 managed, and it made this the widest perspective-control Nikkor until the PC-E 24mm f/3.5D of 2008.

Rørslett, who found the working method slow enough to say so twice, rates the results excellent at f/8 to f/11 and reports blue corner fringing at full shift that becomes purple or red on a digital sensor; he also converted his own copy to tilt as well as shift, which is the movement Nikon built into the first trial barrel of the original PC-Nikkor, dropped before the 1962 launch, and never put back on a manual-focus PC lens. What the record still lacks is a named optical designer, any production figure from the factory, and a dated launch price — Nikon’s ¥136,000 carries no year — and one more thing that should be simple: Nikon’s own English essay says this lens has ten elements where its Japanese original says nine.

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 PC-Nikkor 28mm f/3.5
PC-Nikkor 28mm f/3.5 (Takashi Hososhima) — Takashi Hososhima from Tokyo, Japan, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Sample photo taken with the PC-Nikkor 28mm f/3.5
Shinjuku from above — PC-Nikkor 28mm test frame (Takashi Hososhima) — Takashi Hososhima from Tokyo, Japan, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Sample photo taken with the PC-Nikkor 28mm f/3.5
Choshi Port Tower — PC-Nikkor 28mm f/3.5 (Takashi Hososhima) — Takashi Hososhima from Tokyo, Japan, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Sample photo wanted — shot with a PC-Nikkor 28mm f/3.5? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $340 across 44 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-06 (middle half $270–$440). First day tracked.

Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.

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Related: PC-Nikkor 35mm f/2.8

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.