Nikkor
 |
|
| subsidiary of Nikon Corp | |
| Industry | Camera lenses |
| Founded | Tokyo, Japan (1932) |
| Headquarters | Tokyo, Japan |
| Website | www.nikkor.com |
Nikkor is the brand of lenses produced by Nikon Corporation, including camera lenses for the Nikon F-mount.
The Nikkor brand was introduced in 1932, a Westernised rendering of an earlier version Nikkō (日光), an abbreviation of the company's original full name Nippon Kōgaku ("Japan Optics"; 日本光学工業株式会社). (Nikkō also means "sunlight" and is the name of a Japanese town.) In 1933, Nikon marketed its first camera lens under the Nikkor brand name, the "Aero-NIKKOR," for aerial photography.
Nikon originally reserved the Nikkor designation for its highest-quality imaging optics, but in recent history almost all Nikon lenses are so branded.
Notable Nikkor branded optics have included:
Currently the most actively developed and marketed Nikkor lenses are Nikon's F-mount photographic lenses. These lenses are designed to cover the 24x36mm area of 135 film and the Nikon FX format, or in the case of "DX" designated lenses, the 16x24mm area of the Nikon DX format.
Nikkors constitute the majority of lenses available for the Nikon F-mount, which is itself the largest system of interchangeable flange-mount photographic lenses in history. These lenses are designed for the 135 (35mm) and Nikon DX formats. Over 400 different F-mount Nikkor models are known to exist.
Note: In the case of the Nikkor wides, "W" just means "wide". Prior to approximately 1976, most Nikon lenses had a suffix appended directly after the "Nikkor" name that was used to denote the number of optical elements in the lens design.
For example, a lens with eight elements would be marked "Nikkor-O", and a lens with eleven elements "Nikkor-UD".
Four-group wide-angle lens series, consisting of six, seven, or eight elements:
Six-element, four-group series:
Compact, 4-element, 3-group series.
8-element, 4-group true Apochromat macro lens series, optimized for 1:1 reproduction.
Telephoto series. The 360 mm / 600 mm are triple-convertible lenses with 500 mm and 720 mm / 800 mm and 1200 mm interchangeable rear elements which are available separately.
...
Wikipedia