Nikon "The Thousand and One Nights"

[Grim Tuesday]

I stumbled across this corner of Nikon's website while searching for a lens schematic. It's filled with almost a hundred stories about who, and how, many of Nikon's most interesting lenses were designed. I have only read a few so far but particularly enjoyed the passage about the designer of the lens for the AF35, Koichi Wakimaya

Mr. Wakamiya is elegant, refined and normally good-tempered. One of his cousins is a onetime prime minister who everyone knows. This family background may lead to the elegance of Mr. Wakamiya.

The story which I heard from a senior colleague describes his personality a little. One day, Mr. Wakamiya said at length, "I like the dinner without using any knives and forks," while his colleagues were eating and drinking cheerfully and boisterously in a tavern with Mr. Wakamiya. Hearing the story, I had thought a celebrity would refer to a person like Mr. Wakamiya.
Mr. Wakamiya is interested in artistic handicrafts and products, as they remind him of the presence of a craftsperson and artist in those days. His collection includes cameras and lenses and also the brass microscopes manufactured in the 19th to 20th centuries and its relevant data. For cameras, he seems to be fond of miniature cameras in particular, and he reportedly hailed his son's birth by giving him a mini-camera instead of a toy. Ordinary people would want to talk about what they possess when they are collecting cameras.

However, Mr. Wakamiya would never tell us the full story of his collection. I once tried jointly with Mr. Ohshita to find out what cameras Mr. Wakamiya had collected and we identified four to five cameras by implication, though our superior has been keeping his lips shut tight. The full facts about Mr. Wakamiya's collection still remain unknown.

Well, I'll give you an old story about when Mr. Ohshita and I held a round-table talk with Mr. Wakamiya about cameras in our younger days. I said, "The rangefinder on the X becomes imprecise after a prolonged period of use. Repair costs a lot of money …" Mr. Ohshita responded to my complaint by saying, "You should be able to repair and adjust it by yourself." Then Mr. Wakamiya added, "Mr. Sato, do not use it because it goes out of order when you use it." Mr. Ohshita and I looked at each other stunned. Mr. Wakamiya was quite different from us, and he considered the camera as a collector's item rather than something to be used.

Here is a link to the stories: https://imaging.nikon.com/history/story/

 

[CMoore]

I am not much of a Gear/Lens/Model/Nikon nerd..... but i would think a lot of our members would or have already poured over this.
LOTS of info there.

 

[reddesert]

I learned about this from a post from StepheKoontz a while back. Somewhere, I think I read that these articles were originally written for a Nikon magazine or newsletter, over a period of some years. The technical information and backstory is interesting. I also like the slightly romantic tone and the reminiscences about character and quirks of the optical designers. It's also cool that they often featured "ordinary" lenses and not just the biggest or fastest.

 

[dynachrome]

I have read many of these articles and find them interesting. There are descriptions of the subtle differences between older and newer lenses of the same focal length and speed. The 28/3.5 AI, for example, has improved corner performance over the previous version. The same comparison is made between the 24/2.8 AI and the previous version. In that case, I find the older NC to also be excellent but now I know what Nikon was trying to accomplish with the changes.

 

[tomkatf]

Thanks! Never heard of those before!