Products

Nikon's F reached the market in March 1959 and ran to roughly 862,600 bodies, the first Japanese SLR with a 100 percent viewfinder, interchangeable prisms and screens, mirror lock-up and a motor drive system. Early chrome bodies are the ones collectors separate out: the prism engraved rather than silk-screened Nippon Kogaku, engraved shutter speeds and frame numbers, machined wind levers and focusing screens showing pronounced fresnel rings. The first hundred or so also carried cloth shutter curtains before titanium foil became the standard.