The 5.0cm F1.4 Nikkor-S.C

Early on, Nippon Kogaku produced many optical and opti-mechanical achievements that are attributed to its early progress and eventual great success. The original 5cm F1.4 Nikkor-S proved to be possibly, from a business stand point, one of the most if not the very most important of these. It was advertised as the fastest of the available "normal" lenses and that it was, at least for a very significant short while. But it was much more that that. Even wide open it proved to be amazingly sharp and high contrast in design. It was, for that time, simply the very best available light lens on the market.

Accordingly, it was produced in mounts for Leica (and the Leica clones such as Nicca Canon, etc.), Contax, and Nikon S. It was such a highly successful formulation that the basic lens formula remained constant over a twelve year life span until the Olympic version was introduced in 1962. One early criticism of the physical embodiment of the lens was its very heavy weight and though its external appearance remained largely constant over its lifespan, its internal parts were progressively substituted for with lighter alloy parts such that the heaviest executions were the earliest and later ones were lighter. NK briefly, for about 400 examples in the 1955 time frame, made a version that was largely aluminum and weighed almost 40% less than the very earliest ones. Since this execution proved to be meaningfully less durable, only a few hundred examples were made.

The earliest manifestation of the lens actually has the date of introduction incorporated into its serial number designation. In the lens pictured below:



the "50" represents the year 1950 and the "05" stands for the fifth out of 12 (hence the use of 2 digits as with the "61244" lens discussed elsewhere) months which was May of 1950 when this lens was introduced. Numbers apparently were employed consecutively from 50050001 through 50051987 for a total production of less than 2000 in this initial set of production runs. The lens shown above was the 1090th attempt but it is likely the less were actually sold since Nippon Kogaku was reported to destroy product that it deemed unsaleable for reason of not meeting its standards coupled with its tax liability implications to the Japanese government of that day.

In his 2000 work, Braczko cites that the 5cm f1.4 lenses produced during the occupation had "TOKYO" on the front ring and "MIOJ" engraved elsewhere. Unless the "MIOJ" is obscurely engraved internally we suspect that this may be in error as we have not been able to find such a "MIOJ" engraving on any of the lenses that we have come across.

The next 6000 (or less) had a more conventional serial number run from 316000 through 321999 and like the "5005" stuff were produced during the occupation and specified "Tokyo" on the serial number ring. Pictured below is a "Rotoloni Twin Set" from that production run.



Though the lens formula remained largely constant*, there were significant variations over the product life of this lens
The aperture control ring surface finish and knurled ring size varied:



*There is reason to believe that a part of Nippon Kogaku's production quality control was a very sophisticated and selective "cherry picking" art form. The author is aware of attempts (largely unsuccessful) to salvage whole fine lenses from the parts of damaged ones that would not work since the combinations resulted in optically unacceptable results. This happened despite the fact that substituted parts were attempted only between what were ostensibly optically exactly equivalent lens devices. This is not completely surprising since early optical lens work was highly skilled manual work. Each early lens was the output of highly custom manual efforts.

Even the overall length of the lens was subject to change. In the photo below, the earlier lens is obviously longer in the filter ring dimension and that earlier one is actually more protective of the lens's front element:



Of course, the black 5cm 1.4's were also subject to production non uniformities as well. In the photo below:



which shows two very late but different vintage blacks and a much earlier chrome for comparison, the F stop ring knurling dimension is seen to vary. The font size varies. and there is a curious non uniform treatment of after the decimal digit size. Note the sizes of the "4" in f1.4 and that of the "6" in f5.6 .

The final chapter(s) in the 5cm/50mm F1.4 Rangefinder are the 1964 "OLYMPIC" (named so for its introduction during the 60's Tokyo Olympic games) and the more recent Year 2000 Millenium S3 set F1.4 lens.

To our knowledge, Nikon never released publicly any lens diagrams of the much celebrated original 7/5 50mm F1.4 formulation. However there is information to suggest that the lens formula bore a striking resemblance to the to the 7/6 5.8cm F1.4 "F" lens:

The darker line in what would appear to be the third group is actually an un-cemented pair split only by a very small distance.

In the 7/5 50mm F1.4 RNFDR the third group is a cemented pair that is not split (denoted by the darker line) into two separate elements as in the 7/6 5.8cm "F" formulation. The author acknowledges and thanks Erwin Puts for the fruitful private communications that have led to this information.

The circa 1964 7/5 "Olympic" formulation was deservedly reputed to be a significant improvement over the 7/3 iteratively improved formulation that it succeeded. The Millennium version benefits from such beneficial formulation tweaks as improved glass, advanced NIC coatings and improved air-glass interface curvatures.

Literature has recently appeared that claims beneficial comparisons between the Millennium Nikkor 50mm F1.4 and Leica's $3K Aspherical 50mm F1.4