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

Reflex-Nikkor 500mm f/8

Nippon Kogaku · Nikon F · 1968 · Catadioptric

our own finding

Also known as: Reflex-Nikkor 500mm f/8 · Reflex-Nikkor·C 500mm f/8 · Reflex-Nikkor C 500mm f/8 · Reflex-Nikkor 500mm f/8 New · Reflex-Nikkor 500mm 1:8 N · Nikon 500mm f/8 Reflex · Nikkor 500mm f8 mirror · リフレックスニッコール 500mm F8

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Reflex-Nikkor 500mm f/8 — Nippon Kogaku · Five elements in three groups Nikon F (pre-Ai; no diaphragm, no meter prong) 1968–1971 501001 – 504657 (3,657) 3,657 (Vink)¹
Reflex-Nikkor 500mm f/8 — Nikon Nikon F (pre-Ai; no diaphragm, no meter prong) 1971–1974 510001 – 522806 (12,806) 12,806 (Vink)¹
Reflex-Nikkor·C 500mm f/8 — multicoated Nikon F (pre-Ai; no diaphragm, no meter prong) 1974–1983 530001 – 549537 — April 1974 onward, LENS MADE IN JAPAN
550039 – 585631 — MADE IN JAPAN, to October 1983 		55,631 (Vink, entered against the second block; 585631 − 530001 = 55,630, so the figure appears to cover the whole ·C run)²
Reflex-Nikkor 500mm f/8 (New) · Six elements in six groups — Tsunashima Teruyoshi's redesign, completed August 1982 and patented in Japan and the United States Nikon F (Ai-compatible; no diaphragm, so nothing to index) 1984–2005 183201 – 215262 (32,062) 32,062 (Vink) — twenty-one years, and fewer lenses than the ·C managed in nine and a half³
  1. Vink's quantity column is, in his own words, "Number of lenses made based on serial numbers collected" — spans of numbers, not factory totals. Nikon has published no production figure for any version of this lens.
  2. The ·C quantity is ambiguous. Vink enters 55,631 against the second ·C block, whose recorded serials run 550039–585631 — a span of 35,592. The figure matches 585631 minus 530001, the start of the first ·C block, so it reads as a total for both. That reading is arithmetic performed here, not something the source states.
  3. Family production, adding every block: 3,657 + 12,806 + 55,631 + 32,062 = 104,156 lenses over thirty-seven years, of which 72,094 are the 1968 optical design and 32,062 the 1984 one. All of it arithmetic on Vink's counts.
  4. Nikon dates the 500mm f/8 to 1969 in its own history of the Reflex-Nikkors; Vink's first serial block opens in December 1968. Both are recorded; neither is preferred here.
  5. Nikon's Sales Manual sheet of March 1972 gives the original lens as 5 elements in 3 groups, 5° picture angle, 88mm (P=0.75) attachment, 39mm screw-in rear filter, 93mm diameter by 142mm overall, 1kg, closest focus 4m at about 1:7, code number 108-04-106, with an 88mm screw-in hood (109-05-030) and a leather case (109-05-028).
  6. Tsunashima completed the redesign in August 1982 and the lens went on sale in April 1984. Nikon accounts for the twenty-month gap only by saying the company waited until the time was ripe.
  7. No list price for any version has been found in the sources consulted, in yen or in dollars.
  8. The catadioptric construction is the same on every version: a concave primary mirror, a convex secondary on the back of the front element, and a refracting group behind it. What changed in 1984 was the computation — five elements in three groups from 1968 to 1983, six in six after it — so the two share a name and nothing optical.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • No diaphragm on any version. f/8 is the only aperture there is, and exposure is set with shutter speed or with a neutral-density filter in the holder.
  • Old design or new, settled by one measurement: 93mm across, 135mm long, 1,000g and 4m closest focus is 1968–83; 89mm, 109mm, 840g and 1.5m is 1984–2005.
  • Doughnut-shaped highlights in the out-of-focus areas on every version. The secondary mirror sits in the middle of the entrance pupil, so a defocused point images as a ring.
  • The focusing ring turns past the infinity mark. Nikon's sales manual explains this as compensation for focus shift with temperature, and adds that the lens needs no infrared index because reflection introduces no chromatic aberration.

Reflex-Nikkor 500mm f/8 — Nippon Kogaku:

  • Front ring engraved NIPPON KOGAKU JAPAN
  • 88mm × 0.75 front attachment and a 39mm screw-in filter at the rear
  • 93mm across, 135mm from the mount, 1,000g, closest focus 4m at about 1:7
  • Zero mount screws in Vink's column

Reflex-Nikkor 500mm f/8 — Nikon:

  • Front ring engraved NIKON rather than NIPPON KOGAKU JAPAN — the only change

Reflex-Nikkor·C 500mm f/8 — multicoated:

  • ·C after the name: multicoated. The optics and the barrel are otherwise the 1968 lens
  • The engraving changes from LENS MADE IN JAPAN to MADE IN JAPAN around serial 550039

Reflex-Nikkor 500mm f/8 (New):

  • 82mm front filter where every earlier version takes 88mm
  • 89mm across, 109mm long, 840g — 160 grams and 26mm smaller than the lens it replaced
  • Closest focus 1.5m, about 1:2.5, against 4m and 1:7 on the old design
  • A 500° focus throw, and a rotating tripod collar; HN-27 hood
  • Five cross-head mount screws; MADE IN JAPAN uncoloured

Serial-range notes

183201 – 183318
A hundred and eighteen numbers claimed by two different lenses. Vink's last Reflex-Nikkor 500mm f/5 block ends at 183318 in 1968; the 1984 500mm f/8 New starts at 183201. He records the f/5 serials as engraved with a trailing dot except in a band he gives as 1829xx to 18320x, which is where the overlap opens. A 1.7kg f/5 and an 840g f/8 are not confusable in the hand — but the number alone will not sort them.
550039
Where the ·C engraving changes from LENS MADE IN JAPAN to plain MADE IN JAPAN. Vink records no start number for this block and no separate quantity.
522439 – 522806
Vink's confirmed sightings for the NIKON-engraved version stop at 522439 while his end number is 522806. The last 367 lenses are inferred from Nikon's own records rather than seen.

Specifications

Formula
Catadioptric
Construction
6 elements / 6 groups
Aperture range
f/8–f/8
Min. focus
1.5 m
Dimensions
89 × 109 mm
Weight
840 g
Filter
82 mm
Years manufactured
1968–2005
Country
Japan
Coating
Single-coated to 1974; multicoated from the ·C; Super Integrated Coating on the later New, which Nikon says was adopted for better balance and a clearer image.

What reviewers say

Optical Ratings

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

Chromatic aberration
none by design
Flare & ghosting
two built-in baffles
Optical formula — Catadioptric

Nikon's own cross-section of this lens exists and has been read; the diagram is missing because the house drawing language cannot express a catadioptric without lying about it. The light enters through the outer annulus of the front corrector, travels back to an annular primary mirror, reflects forward to a secondary silvered on the back of the front element, reflects rearward again, and passes through a refracting group sitting inside a bore through the middle of the primary. So the piece that is optically third is physically the rearmost, and three groups are nested inside another. Drawn as a left-to-right sequence it would read as a plain six-element refractor, which is the one thing this lens is not.

History

A mirror lens folds the light path twice, so a 500mm lens can be 135mm long. That is the whole argument, and Nippon Kogaku had been making it since 1961, when the Reflex-Nikkor 500mm f/5 arrived — a 1.7kg lens that a photographer could hold. The f/8 of December 1968 went the other way deliberately. Nikon’s sales literature of the period puts the case plainly: the slower lens gives greater depth of field and smaller blurred rings in the out-of-focus areas, at the cost of about a stop and a third. It came out at 1kg and 93mm across, and it stayed in the catalogue, engraving changes and multicoating aside, for fifteen years.

Then Teruyoshi Tsunashima recomputed it. His design, finished in August 1982 and on sale in April 1984, is six elements in six groups where the old one was five in three, and it is smaller in every dimension: 89mm across, 109mm long, 840 grams. What it bought with the extra elements was close focus. The old lens stopped at 4 metres; the new one goes to 1.5, about 1:2.5, which is nearer than most macro lenses of the period managed. Nikon says the specification accelerated the reflex boom of the 1980s. The production figures complicate that: 32,062 lenses in twenty-one years, against 55,631 for the multicoated version it replaced in nine and a half.

Tsunashima’s own account of the design, as Nikon’s Haruo Sato relays it, turns on a hole. The primary mirror is an annulus, and the refracting group behind it can either sit clear of the mirror or sit inside a bore through its centre. The second arrangement performs better because stray light cannot reach the film directly; it is also much harder to make, because the bore has to be accurate. Tsunashima chose it, and then — having moved through production and quality control earlier in his career — went and made it work on the line himself. Sato also records that Tsunashima submitted the optical design report under a colleague’s name, on the grounds that writing it was troublesome.

Bjørn Rørslett, who has used both, rates the old lens 3 out of 5 and the new one 3.5, and his objections are structural rather than optical. A mirror lens has no diaphragm, so contrast cannot be improved by stopping down; the barrel is short and light, so it vibrates; the New’s rotating collar he calls flimsy. Sato, writing for Nikon, claims something for it that no rival mirror design achieves in his experience: the ring-shaped defocused highlight keeps its shape across the entire frame rather than deforming toward the corners.

Two questions remain open. Nikon dates the f/8 to 1969 and Vink’s serial numbers start in December 1968, a small disagreement that nothing consulted resolves. And a stranger one: Vink’s last Reflex-Nikkor 500mm f/5 ends at serial 183318, while the 1984 New begins at 183201, so a hundred and eighteen numbers belong to two lenses sixteen years apart. Nobody has explained why Nikon reached back into a retired block, and no price has been found for either.

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 Reflex-Nikkor 500mm f/8
Reflex-Nikkor 500mm f/8 (Amada44) — Amada44, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Sample photo taken with the Reflex-Nikkor 500mm f/8
Reflex-Nikkor 500mm f/8 with its case (Amada44) — Amada44, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Sample photo taken with the Reflex-Nikkor 500mm f/8
Vélo jaune — the mirror lens's ring bokeh (Sauvignet-l-d) — Sauvignet-l-d, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sample photo wanted — shot with a Reflex-Nikkor 500mm f/8? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $200 across 58 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $160–$250). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 2 days: unchanged from $200.

By day
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2026-09-11$200$160–$25058
2026-09-06$200$160–$25058

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Related: Reflex-Nikkor 1000mm f/11

Sources (4)

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.