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NIKON S3

Today we talk about Nikon S3 paraxial camera, which I have only talked about in various collections of Nikon cameras in the past. This is not only an old camera, but also a camera that allows Nikon to reproduce it long after it has been discontinued.

Let's start with a brief introduction to the basic background of the S3, which was released in March 1958 and was produced in March 1967. If you want to understand the complete development history of the Nikon side shaft, you can take a look at this article "although not as good as Leica, it can also be called a classic | Nikon S series side axis story".

Nikon used to be called Japanese Optics. Before the war, Nikon was a military optical manufacturer under Mitsubishi chaebol, specializing in providing rangefinders, telescopes and other military optical equipment for the Japanese navy.

After World War II, the American occupying forces disarmed Japan and disbanded the chaebol. Japanese Optics began to develop civilian small cameras in 1946 after the reorganization of assets. Before the war, the small cameras in the world were mainly German cameras, at a time when Germany was divided and the entire camera industry was fragmented, which pushed Japanese optics, which lost its traditional business, into the civilian aircraft market.

It took Japanese Optics two years to finally complete an imitation of the German Zeiss contax paraxial camera in 1947 and released the Nikon camera in 1948, which was later called the NIKON I for ease of distinction.

Although it was very chaotic after the war, Japanese Optics changed the focus distance of the contax card in order to avoid the risk of intellectual property problems. although the Nikon side shaft system has the same part style as the contax, the two lenses are not universal.

Over the next few years, Japanese Optics continued to refine their camera, and by the S2 in 1954, it was relatively perfect, equipped with a pass wrench and a 1.0x ALBADA viewfinder with a view frame.

However, there are still some imperfections in S2, especially the shutter disk is still the two separate shutter disks.

By 1957, Nippon Optics had made a fairly radical upgrade to S2, and Nikon had developed two cameras, a more advanced and complete S3 to replace S2, and a SP that challenged the Leica M3 camera.

In the Nikon museum, we can see the development trajectory of the early S3 prototype and the SP,S3 camera, both of which were developed at the same time, with the exception of the viewfinder system, the other parts are basically common. At that time, Nikon hoped to form a high, medium, half and universal product line of SP,S3,S3M,S4, which was said by Nikon himself.

To highlight the status of SP, it was first released in September 1957, and the following March 1958 released the NIKON S3 camera, which is our protagonist today.

The Nikon S3 was not the most advanced side-axis camera at that time, and it was not equipped with a bright wireframe, but in the 1950s even the Flenda side axis did not use a bright wireframe viewfinder. But after the 1960s, bright wireframe viewfinders became very popular.

Let's go back to Nikon S3 camera, first of all, this is a very outstanding camera, it has some traces that mimic the shape of Leica, but only traces, the overall appearance is very different.

I chose a black paint S3 camera, which was made to commemorate the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. In fact, most of the S3 cameras are silver, such as the one below.

Here are some of the basic features of this camera.

Like SP, Nikon S3 finally uses a single shutter disc, using mechanical cloth to make horizontal shutters at a speed of 1-1000, equipped with B and T doors, and a full shutter speed of 60. This shutter is not outsourced as a whole, but integrated with the system to assemble parts manually.

The position of the shutter disc is high, so it is suitable for direct rotation.

There is a mechanically controlled indicator panel on the shutter disc, which controls the flash mode. There is a flash interface on the side of the fuselage and at the cold boots.

Nikon cameras can use different brands and different types of flash bulbs. The instructions list the light bulbs that can be used and the flash range.

The shutter color on the Nikon S3 shutter is actually corresponding to this flash synchronized disk, red is fully open 60, white is slow door, each gear is solid speed, green is fast shutter, using the distance between the front and rear curtains to create a quick effect.

There has been electronic flash in the 1950s, and electronic flash can only be used at full speed. But if you look at the picture above, there was also a FP mode at that time, that is, a high-speed flash bulb specially used for this kind of camera.

The use of different light bulbs needs to be inserted in the right flash position, and turn the turntable to the appropriate position to trigger the flash.

For us to use now, basically no impact, switch to the FX this file can be connected to the flash. But generally use Nikon S3 this kind of camera, may not use flash. However, since the retro flash of Shenniu came out, it was once more popular to insert this light on the old camera.

The number of films and the rest of the film are integrated together. There are two windows on the film tray, showing how many shots have been taken, and the window below shows the total number of films. There are 20 and 36 options.

Another interesting design is the reverse film. Notice that there are two letters An and R in front of the shutter. Turn to R and you can rewind the film. The rewind part is a turntable with a wrench, and the rewind is faster and more comfortable than the twist of Leica M3 and M2.

And then there's the viewfinder.

Nikon S3's viewfinder is a classic ALBADA, with simple optical structure and three painted wireframes, which represent 35mm 50mm and 105mm viewfinder. The ALBDA viewfinder does not have parallax correction, so there are some triangular marks on each frame line indicating the actual range of view at close range. The SP is a bright wireframe design with parallax correction, so there is no triangle on its frame.

The picture below is what happens in the viewfinder. Pay attention to the triangles.

Because the ALBADA viewfinder is used, its macular light path is not enhanced, so the contrast is very low, and the macula looks lighter. This is a common fault of this kind of viewfinder, not only caused by the aging of S3, but also by the reproduction of S3 macula.

Moreover, S3 is a constant magnification viewfinder with a magnification of 1.0. it is very inconvenient to use the frame line of 35mm, which is too large.

In Nikon cameras, only S3 and SP have 35mm lines, while only S3 places 35mm lines in the main viewfinder with focus, while SP has a small wide-angle viewfinder on the edge of the main viewfinder. So SP needs a frame focus and a frame view with 35mm, just like the old camera, but S3 can do it all at once.

On the bayonet, Nikon S3 uses a contax structure bayonet, which is completely different from the way Leica putters measure distance.

The bayonet has two interfaces: the inner claw and the outer claw. The inner claw can only use the 50mm lens, while the bayonet has a set of depth-of-field ruler (black background and white character) specially for the 50mm lens. The other lenses are external claws, and the lens has its own depth of field ruler.

It has a wheel on its fuselage, which can also control focus, and the lens rotates when it rotates. However, this runner is not very smooth, especially when using the outer claw head. The biggest function of this wheel is to prevent the lens from turning: because the aperture and focus of this lens are on the same cylinder, you turn the aperture and the entire lens will move (usually the lens aperture and focus are separated, the rotation lens will not move), so the other finger holds the turntable, the lens will not rotate, and the aperture can be adjusted at this time.

The camera is still the old-fashioned removable rear cover, the roll up is a fast system, and the winding efficiency is OK.

In addition, the wrench on the front of the camera is a timing function.

Nikon developed the large F camera in 1959, then turned to the DSLR, stopped developing the side shaft, and stopped production of the S3 in 1967. The S3 is the last paraxial camera that Nikon discontinued.

But at the turn of the century in 1999, Nikon suddenly announced the re-limited production of the S3 side axle, with the newly coated and old design of the 50amp 1.4 SONNAR structure lens.

The camera replicates the old camera as much as possible, and fine-tunes some of its contents, such as changing the original 20max 36 disk to 24 ram 36 and the bottom sensitivity disc to ISO.

Finally, the duplicate version of S3, which began to take orders in April 2000, was in short supply, and 8000 sets were produced in one breath by 2001.

By June 2002, they had launched another 2000 black-painted S3s.

The price of the silver S3 set is 480,000 yen, while that of black is 530,000 yen. Now a set of silver S3 is about 10,000, while black is a little more expensive. Silver has dropped a lot compared with the original price. When I bought it a few years ago, I bought it for more than 8000 yuan because of the lack of a sunshade.

According to Nikon himself, the project began as early as 1994. At that time, Nikon Mito, which made manual cameras such as the FM2,FM3A, hoped that its headquarters would approve them to produce a side shaft comparable to Leica. After weighing, the Mito factory took the drawings of the S3 camera from Nikon's headquarters and decided to reproduce the camera, but at that time the Japanese bubble economy burst and the project came to an end.

In 1998, Nikon's camera department contacted Mito Factory and decided that the reproduction plan was feasible. There is a background here. Due to the economic recession, the Japanese second-hand camera market exploded in the 1990s, and the popularity of cheap old cameras set off a craze for old cameras.

Led by Nikon headquarters, Nikon's optics department also joined in. Finally, in December 1998, Nikon Corporation and three specific departments formed a special team, began to reproduce S3 cameras, and decided to reduce production costs by taking orders for production. The original estimate was 700000-800000 yen a set (later SP on this price), and later the price was controlled at about 500,000 yen.

In order to reproduce this machine, the Shuihu factory even brought in a new batch of machines. Nikon S3 has a total of 816 parts. In order to get close to the original machine in raw materials, there are more and more suppliers, snowballs are getting bigger and bigger, and some parts have been outsourced.

The reproduction work has encountered unimaginable difficulties, and many parts are not up to standard. Although Nikon has been making FM2 SLR cameras, they haven't produced range-measuring paraxial cameras for too long. The scrap rate in the reproduction of S3 is extremely high, but Nikon persists in manufacturing even though the top cover is 50% unqualified.

In addition, although the exact same parts have been made, the drawings are the repair drawings of the year, and the assembly of each part is not listed, so we can only find technicians who are still alive to guide them.

After overcoming a series of difficulties, Nikon finally completed 30 employees to assemble 500 units a month, shipping from June 2000 to about 8000 units by the beginning of 2001.

Now it is not difficult to see Nikon S3 in the second-hand market, whether it is the old version or the 2000 version. It is small in size, excellent in appearance and not troublesome to operate.

However, the shortcomings of S3 are still quite obvious, such as too long focusing stroke, too light macula and so on. Compared with Leica M3 M3 M2, most S3 is not well maintained and has a lot of faults. And almost no one in China can maintain this camera, and many masters who can maintain Leica are also unwilling to maintain S3 or SP. Some people can still be found to maintain it in Japan.

As for the 2000 reprint, it's a large set, including a 50 hip 1.4 lens, a sunshade, a retro lens cover and a holster. Once it is fitted with a leather case, it is very inconvenient, because the leather case is connected to the fuselage with screws. If it is bare, it feels a little smaller than the Leica M camera (actually about the same size) and works well.

But the 2000 copy is so expensive that it is already possible to buy some Leica M cameras, which are not cost-effective and are usually bought only by enthusiasts.

This article is from the official Wechat account: film fan club (ID:jiaojuanmi), author: Shanghai Old dirty Turtle

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