Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

F news photos appeared as early as the middle of the 19th century, but the problem of speed has always perplexed journalists, an important press conference often can only get a limited number of photos. In order to improve the success rate and accuracy of shooting by reporters, DSLR cameras appeared in the 1920s. After the emergence of the double-reflex camera, it has become standard for many journalists, but although the speed of the double-reflex camera is OK, it is limited by the lens, so it is often inconvenient to shoot, so we can see that in the movie "Godfather", it is 1945 (the background time of the film is the 1970s), and reporters are still using large-frame metal machines to capture pictures.

At that time, reporters used all kinds of cameras, whatever cameras they could easily use, and there were all kinds of machines at press conferences. Due to the slow recovery of the camera industry after World War II, basically focused on the production of pre-war products, coupled with the split of the camera kingdom Germany, the camera industry was badly hit, in the 10 years from 1945 to 1955, paraxial cameras and large frame snapshots are the absolute main forces of news photography.

We can see that many Magnum photographers use Leica cameras, while many Magnum photographers also belong to journalists, and Leica M cameras are also designed for medium-and long-distance photography. At that time, many paraxial cameras used a view magnification of 1.0 after the integration of focus and focus.

The camera that had a real decisive significance to the world of journalists was the appearance of Nikunda F in 1959.

Nikon has been developing paraxial cameras in the 1950s, which smacks of going head-to-head with Leica. But the Nikon S side axle is really no match for Leica M, and Nikon saw that Japanese manufacturers around them were developing 135 SLR cameras, so they also built SLRs instead.

To make it clear what Nikon F is good at, we have to look at the level of 135 SLRs in the 1950s.

It is true that the status of Japan as a camera kingdom is lucky at all times. It is really a gift from the United States and the Soviet Union. After World War II, Germany was divided into two parts, and East Germany was much smaller than West Germany, but Germany's camera and optical industries were all in the east. The planned economic system of East Germany made the camera industry lose its momentum to rise, while West Germany lacked strength.

Therefore, the 135 SLR camera was obviously invented by the Germans and developed by the Germans, but the Germans failed to develop further due to historical reasons and soon lagged behind Japan.

The earliest DSLR in Japan is the ASAHIFLEX,1952 product of Asahi Optics. You may even get a little confused just by looking at this picture. Why does this DSLR look like a side axis? Indeed, this camera also has a special viewfinder. Its overall performance is not as good as that of the 1936 Ecksan camera.

In 1957, Asahi Optics launched the AP camera, using the name PENTAX for the first time.

After 1957, Japanese DSLR began to develop. in addition to PENTAX's AP, Minolta's SR-2 was also very famous, which opened the DSLR era of Minolta.

There was also a famous DSLR in 1958, the DSLR of Imperial Optics.

In fact, the development of the Nikon F has already begun, and the development of the large F camera began in 1957.

At the same time, the German DSLR is coming back.

What Zeiss is promoting is that Germany was not officially divided when the camera was developed in 1947, but Germany split the following year, and it became a product of East Germany Zeiss. The contax S camera uses a five-prism and a 42mm screw, but the development of this camera has basically stalled since it was developed. Later, as a result of the lawsuit in West Germany, contax cameras in East Germany were renamed PENTACON cameras, and by 1958, the whole technology came to a complete standstill.

In 1952, the KW factory in East Germany developed the Praktina SLR, which was the best-performing DSLR in the world at that time. In fact, the Japanese camera behind it mainly imitated this DSLR. And the camera can change the viewfinder, which is a great inspiration for the later ZUNOW SLR and Nikon F.

However, the camera was developed in 1960, when the KW factory merged, and the series immediately stopped development.

Compared with East Germany, West German DSLRs are more speechless. Since Zeiss in West Germany had no experience in making cameras, the SLR at first was an inter-mirror shutter. The real meaning of the first DSLR is Bull Eye.

The cow-eye camera looks advanced, but it is actually very impractical, and the price is so expensive that West German Zeiss himself has given up after nearly 10 years of development. Its aperture linkage design looks advanced, but it is actually very inconvenient to use.

Against this background, Nikunda F appeared.

The Nikon F camera looks like a mediocre manual SLR. In those days, however, Big F was the most convenient for journalists to operate.

In fact, Nikunda F adds the reflector system on the basis of the design of the S3 side shaft fuselage.

As a result, Nikon F inherits Nikon S3's concise operating system. The top layout is the same as the Nikon S3 side axle, especially the iconic rewind AR button and flash indicator. The following is the top comparison of S3 and F, we can see that the parts are all the same. But the big F is a little longer than S3.

The Nikonda F is a separate rear cover, rather than the later popular wide door, which is the same as the S3. The shutter used is the same as the horizontal shutter. If you look at the picture above, you can see that the digital color of the shutter disc is the same. Nikon, the digital color of the shutter disc, indicates the flash. So the color of big F changed in the later period, because the era of flash bulb gradually passed, and electric flash became more and more popular.

The camera's original pentagonal prism has a magnification of 0.8 and a visual field rate of 100%.

In addition, the Nikonda F also has a very important function, which designs a full-aperture view. That is, when you adjust the aperture ring, the aperture will not contract, you can use the full-open situation to view. When shooting, the bayonet has a driving lever, and the lens will automatically shrink the aperture. In the early days, most SLRs did not have this function, so once the aperture was reduced, the picture would become very dark. But the full aperture depth of field is not right. Nikon has figured it out for you. The front of the fuselage is the depth of field preview button. Press the aperture to shrink, and you can see the actual depth of field in your viewfinder.

The most important professional design of Nikon F is the replaceable viewfinder, and Nikon has a new interpretation of this function.

The German camera sets up a replaceable viewfinder, mainly to switch between eye level and waist level, and then to adjust the photography angle. for journalists, waist level photography is very inconvenient, otherwise 135 SLR will not replace 120 DSLR so quickly. The reason why 120 DSLR also has to install prism accessories is the same. For journalists in pursuit of speed, the upside-down view has a fatal impact on capture. For commercial photographers who can take pictures in the shed, this is not a problem, so we can see that most of the 120 DSLRs were not equipped with a pentagram in the early days.

Another aspect of Nikon's replaceable viewfinder is the upgrade-Nikon is also aware of the importance of photometry, and they choose to integrate photometry into the viewfinder.

Nikon was not aware of the concept of TTL at the beginning of the design, but they did reserve design space for the implementation of the concept.

In other words, the Nikon F camera does not need to redesign a SP camera like Pentax, but only needs to redesign a photometer top to complete TTL photometry. All the way to F2, Nikon was designed in this way.

Nikon F-1 has a total of four generations of optical external viewfinder, which has been on sale since 1962, mainly in the form of tie-in fuselage, all named PHOTOMIC.

The first generation of external viewfinder, such as the PHOTOMIC introduced in 1962, uses an exposed CDS to measure light, not a TTL. There is a lever on the top of the photometer that can link the claws on the lens to achieve the function of photometry using the aperture.

This is the second generation viewfinder, called PHOTOMIC T, yes, this T means TTL, which went on sale in 1965. This is how Nikon F realized the TTL photometry function, which, in terms of launch time, was no more than a few months later than Pentax SP and TOPCON RE.

But this photometer is so violent that two CDS photometers are placed in two sections of the reflected light path to measure the light on the whole light path, similar to the current overall average photometry. This kind of photometry mode is the most accurate in the general mode, as long as the light is a little larger, something will happen. Black-and-white film is not a big problem, if you use this to shoot precious Kodak Krom film. The president of the news agency must hammer you out.

Two years later, in April 1967, Nikon probably felt that comprehensive photometry had caused a lot of trouble, adjusted the photometer top and launched PHOTOMIC TN, and the camera reset the metering circuit, taking the circle of the central 1.2cm as a reference, measuring 60% inside the circle and 40% outside the circle, which is simply the most widely used central focus metering. Even if the photometry of the digital camera has evolved to the whole area matrix photometry, some people still use the central focus photometry.

In 1967, Nikunda F had basically conquered news agencies in the United States and Europe, becoming the best-selling reporter camera in the world at that time.

In 1968, Nikonda F launched the last generation of photometer, PHOTOMIC FTN, good boy, put the front of the FMagee TMagne TN into a whole. This generation of Big F already looks a bit like F2 with a glowing top.

Compared with the previous generation of TN, the top of FTN is smaller in size and less in weight.

But FTN can indicate the maximum aperture of the current lens, and you can see the shutter speed.

Nikon F also has two functional viewfinders, one waist flat and one motion viewfinder.

Now that the photometric problem is solved, here is the film.

Journalists need not only speed, but also a number of photos, and then the wrench obviously can't meet their demand for speed, so Nikunda F already has a handle.

How's it going? Don't you feel domineering!

This early Fmur36 handle allowed the camera to shoot up to 4 shots per second, a speed that was already fast in the 1960s. A roll of film ran out in a few seconds. In fact, the MD-2 that F2 used later was only 5 sheets per second.

Of course, there is one last thing that has completely breached the defenses of news agencies around the world. Nikon F is cheap, and its price is the 1amp 5 of the Leica M3 optical fuselage. Speaking of cheap, it was not cheap at that time. A set of big F was equivalent to the average salary of five months of Japanese civil servants in 1960. However, this is a drop in the bucket for news agencies all over the world. This camera is not a toy for enthusiasts, but a proper means of production, and they are expected to shoot some big news.

The Nikonda F also produced a lot, from 1959 to 1973, and yes, the F2 sold it for several years. According to Nikon's own number, the total production is about 800000 units.

Although the Nikon F is not as famous as the later F2, it basically established the paradigm of the camera for journalists.

As reporters use 135SLR for speed, durability, versatility requirements are the highest, so later generally used by professional journalists as the top 135evaluation criteria, and can achieve this standard of manual focus exactly only Nikon FMagi F2jia F3, Canon new and old generation F1, Pentax LX and Minolta X1 these seven cameras.

But journalists actually use a lot of other cameras, but Nikon F cameras were used most by all types of journalists from at least 1960 to 1990.

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

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