[Leica] (FF) waned Micro-Nikkor

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

The 55 3.5 Nikor came in myriads of versions over the years and when I
bought mine from Pro photo in Portland Oregon in April 2005 it looked like a
collector had them all and traded them  all in.  or the guy died and his
wife wanted his toys out of her hair.  so I had the range of designs to pick
from right in front of me in the glass case  andthen on top of the glass
case and in my hands - and of various prices. I decided having the writing
inside the rim of the lens was a bit too retro and non functional for my
needs. So I got the first one which was all blank  and black on the outer
rim.

They first came out in 1966 if you don't count a very rare thing in '61
people thought was a one off as it looked like one.

As you say Alan , It was 1970 when the scalloped ring was replaced with
rubber and It had the unusual feature of an aperture mechanism tension
spring at the rear of the lens which compensated for "bellows factor" in the
lens.
The  pk-3 extension ring was needed for 1:1
I am unable to find when that feature was taken out of the lineup. I wish I
knew for sure if my lens has it or not as sometimes I get anomalous readings
and perhaps that would explain that.

What nikon did for macro was it made the normal focal length macro lens into
a general purpose lens which people would walk around with all day instead
of a normal 50. This from what I can gather was really not done before. The
reasons I'm guessing was they were heavy or they didn't focus to infinity or
they were exceedingly slow. Or all or none of the above.
I'd read over the years the early nikon macros were optimized for close in
and not infinity like a plane vanilla 50mm lens.  But the lenes became some
popular as general use that over the yeras that they made several versions
which were optimized at infinity. I'm guessing and hoping my f3.5 is not one
of those but those were the 2.8's.
If you ask me infinity is such a long distance away that who needs something
optimized for it? I'm not even sure my eye glasses go that far. Or my eyes.
Or my imagination. And I've for sure never walked that far.


Mark William Rabiner





> From: Alan Magayne-Roshak <amr3 at uwm.edu>
> Reply-To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 09:12:12 -0500 (CDT)
> To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Subject: Re: [Leica] (FF) waned Micro-Nikkor
> 
> On Sat, 09 Jul 2011 Mark Rabiner <mark at rabinergroup.com> wrote:
>  
>> My macro lens I have right here is my 55 3.5 Nikkor and it focuses to 9.5
>> inches where it gets  half sized or "2" you can read on the barrel.
> 
>> Also I remember having ways to deal with light loss from macro shooting 
>> and
>> I forget the details I think at 1:1 you'd loose two stops and 1:2 you'd
>> loose one stop. I may have forgotten this. I had a cardboard wheel and 
>> other
>> gizmos and a trick I used ot use.  But I think it was at 3 feet where you
>> didn't have any light loss any more that you'd have to allow for exposure
>> wise. This defining I'm sure in many photographers eyes what the limits of
>> macro was. Macro was where you had to allow for in effect bellows factor.
> ==============================================================================
> ========================
> Remember the early Micro-Nikkors that had the compensating diaphragm?  At
> anything smaller than f/4, it automatically opened up to mitigate the 
> exposure
> difference needed by increasing magnification.  We have two at the office 
> that
> got years of use on the copy stand when we did a lot of slides from books 
> for
> Art History and other departments.  It was so convenient to use the same
> exposure for all sizes of originals (since the lights were always the same
> intensity).  These compensator lenses had the metal, knurled focus ring, as
> opposed to the later rubber-clad versions.
> 
> One of the sharpest lenses I've ever used was my 50mm f/4 Pre-Set Takumar
> macro that went all the way to 1:1 without extra tubes.  I shot H&W Control
> Film and Tech Pan with it, and used it on my Beseler 23C for years to make
> enlargments. I'd still be using this lens if I hadn't sold it to my brother
> with all my Pentax equipment when I switched to Olympus in 1982.
> 
> Alan
> 
> Alan Magayne-Roshak, Senior Photographer
> UPAA POY 1978
> University Information Technology Services
> University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
> amr3 at uwm.edu
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alan+Magayne-Roshak/
> 
> 
> 
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