--- title: "The Nikon F, the Hockey Puck That Took Over Photojournalism" url: https://quietmenace.com/tech/nikon-f-camera-history/ author: Quiet Menace Editors section: Tech published: 2026-10-29 updated: 2026-10-29 topics: Cameras, Tech History, Industrial Design, Japan --- # The Nikon F, the Hockey Puck That Took Over Photojournalism > In 1959 a Japanese optics company built a single-lens reflex tough enough for war correspondents. Within a decade, the professionals had switched. In the spring of 1959, Nippon Kogaku showed the world its first single-lens reflex. Some accounts place the unveiling at a trade show in Philadelphia in March, and Wikipedia dates the introduction to April. Either way, the camera on the stand was a black and chrome box with a sharply peaked prism on top, and in the United States it sold for $186 with a 50mm f/2 lens. It was called the Nikon F, and it would spend the next decade turning the camera bag of the working photographer upside down. ## A rangefinder with a mirror inside Nippon Kogaku was founded on July 25, 1917, and by the 1950s it was known abroad for rangefinder cameras and its Nikkor lenses. Its newest rangefinder, the Nikon SP, arrived in 1957. The F grew directly out of it. The prototype was essentially an SP with a mirror box, a pentaprism and a larger lens mount added, and many parts carried over from one camera to the other. The engineering lead was Masahiko Fuketa, the company's chief designer, who had also drawn its rangefinders. The look came from somewhere else. Yusaku Kamekura, the graphic designer who would create the logo and posters for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, designed a series of Nikon logos and the pyramid-shaped viewfinder housing that gives the F its silhouette. Where rival SLRs of the period were rounded, the F was angular and boxy, and it was stress tested against heat, cold and vibration before it went on sale. Even the name had a backstory. A long-running rumor holds that the F stands for Fuketa. Nikon's own explanation is that the letter comes from the middle of the word reflex. In some markets the camera wore a different badge altogether. Because Nikon sounded too close to Zeiss Ikon for comfort in Germany, it was sold there as the Nikkor F. ## A system, not a camera The F's real innovation was that almost everything on it came off. The prism finder lifted away and could be swapped for a waist-level finder or a sports finder. The focusing screens changed too, and the back came off completely for loading. There was a depth-of-field preview button, a mirror that could be locked up and a single-stroke film advance lever. The focal-plane shutter ran from 1 second to 1/1000 and used titanium-foil curtains, a first for the class. Earlier SLRs had used cloth, which could burn through if the lens focused the sun on it. Looking through the camera was just as much of an advance. An instant-return mirror and an automatic diaphragm kept the view bright between shots, and the finder showed 100 percent of the frame, which no SLR had done before. That last point mattered more than it sounds. A rangefinder like the [Leica M6](https://quietmenace.com/tech/leica-m6-film-revival/) frames through a separate window and struggles with lenses longer than about 135mm. An SLR shows exactly what the lens sees, at any focal length, and by 1962 the Nikkor range for the F ran from 21mm to 1000mm. Then there was the motor. The F36 drive bolted to the base and fired at up to 4 frames per second with the mirror locked up, or 3 frames per second with full reflex viewing. Nikon also offered a second drive, the F-250. At the 1972 Sapporo Winter Olympics, a high speed version of the F reached 7 frames per second. Metering arrived in stages. Early owners clipped on a selenium meter. The first Photomic finder, delivered from 1962, put a separate light cell in the prism housing. The Photomic T of 1965 metered through the lens, and the Photomic FTn of 1968 introduced 60 percent center-weighted metering, which became Nikon's standard pattern for decades. ![A vintage Nikon film camera with a 50mm lens photographed against a black background](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1744133681724-4c39091767d2?w=1600&h=1067&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop) *A vintage Nikon film body with a 50mm lens. The F's standard kit paired the body with a 50mm Nikkor. Photo by Leandro Hernández on Unsplash* ## The camera that went to war All of this added up to the first 35mm SLR system adopted widely by professional photographers. Among the most visible were the photojournalists covering the Vietnam War. The F earned the nickname the hockey puck for its durability. In 1963, a group of Americans carried one to the summit of Mount Everest. The best known proof of its toughness belongs to the British photographer Don McCullin. His Nikon F stopped a bullet that would otherwise have hit him. Wikipedia dates the incident to 1968, while New Zealand Geographic places it in Cambodia in 1970, so the year is less certain than the dent. The shift was large enough to change the market. Professionals who had carried Leica rangefinders moved to the Nikon system in numbers, and Leica never regained its dominance among working photographers. Where the [Hasselblad 500C](https://quietmenace.com/tech/hasselblad-500c-moon-camera/) was the camera of the studio and the tripod, the F became the camera of the street, the stadium and the front line. NASA came calling too. In 1965 the agency asked Nikon for a 220-degree ultra-wide lens, which became the Fisheye Nikkor 6mm f/5.6. In January 1971 a Photomic FTN based on the F was selected for Apollo 15. Nikon delivered nine cameras with 55mm f/1.2 lenses that June, with the synthetic leather replaced by metal panels, the body coated matte black and the controls enlarged for gloved hands. According to [Nikon's account of the project](https://www.nikon.com/company/corporate/history/frontier/10/), the cameras were tested for a range of minus 100 to plus 120 degrees Celsius. A motor-driven F on Apollo 15 became the first 35mm SLR in lunar orbit, and modified F cameras later flew aboard Skylab. ## The F-numbered line Production of the F ended in 1973. How many were made depends on whom you ask. The [Wikipedia entry on the Nikon F](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikon_F) gives 862,600 bodies, while some collector histories estimate about one million. Its replacement, the F2, was released in September 1971. It kept the interchangeable finders and detachable motor, raised the top shutter speed to 1/2000 and is often described as the last all-mechanical professional Nikon. The F3 followed in March 1980, styled by the Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro with a red stripe on the grip and aperture-priority automation behind an electronically controlled shutter. It stayed in production until 2001, a run of about two decades. For a far younger camera that also won loyalty with physical controls, see our history of the [Fujifilm X100](https://quietmenace.com/tech/fujifilm-x100-history/). The film line ended with the F6 in 2004, and since the digital D1 of September 1999, Nikon has kept single-digit numbers for its flagship bodies. What outlasted every body was the mount. The F bayonet, with its 46.5mm flange distance, was still fitted to the D6 in 2020, which makes it the longest running SLR lens mount there is. Nikon's mirrorless Z mount is its successor, and the FTZ adapters let many F-mount lenses work on the new bodies. The F belongs alongside the [Sony Walkman](https://quietmenace.com/tech/sony-walkman-personal-audio/) as one of the postwar Japanese objects that rewrote a category the West had considered its own. For more, see [cameras](https://quietmenace.com/topics/cameras/), [tech history](https://quietmenace.com/topics/tech-history/), [industrial design](https://quietmenace.com/topics/industrial-design/), [Japan](https://quietmenace.com/topics/japan/) and the [Quiet Menace tech section](https://quietmenace.com/tech/). Pick up a 1959 F today and the peaked prism still looks like a piece of architecture. Lift it off and the camera underneath is open to the sky, ready for a different finder. That was the whole idea. Nikon did not build one camera for every photographer. It built one body that every photographer could rebuild. --- Filed under: [Cameras](https://quietmenace.com/topics/cameras/), [Tech History](https://quietmenace.com/topics/tech-history/), [Industrial Design](https://quietmenace.com/topics/industrial-design/), [Japan](https://quietmenace.com/topics/japan/) Hero image: Photo by Mikkel Bech on Unsplash (Unsplash License)