Here’s another vintage lens post. This time it’s a bit of an odd choice and a lens that has been overlooked as a cheap alternative to the better manufactured Nikon lenses of the late 1970’s early 80’s.
When Nikon released the Nikon EM camera it was small and light compared to the other Nikon models at the time. Nikon were trying to encourage women to the rapidly growing hobby of photography with lighter and a little more compact designed cameras. Make of that what you will!! They also had another camera company to compete against in the lighter camera department which was Olympus with their OM 1. It was a fantastic camera (I owned 2 of them alongside an OM 3 and OM 4!). Obviously with the advent of lighter cameras along came lighter lenses.
At the time lens construction was metal and obviously glass but as the designs needed to be lighter, so engineering plastic became the answer. This didn’t go down too well with the purists and most complaints were about how long these lenses were going to last. It’s amazing to think now as the vast majority of modern camera and lens manufacturing is all plastic. If a modern lens has metal components in its design it’s more of a question of ‘why now?’!
Also, take look at other lens posts here to see how I continue to use these E Series lenses today. Just shows that if you look after anything it can stand the test of time.
So here is a Nikon Series E 75-150mm F3.5 zoom. The strange thing about this lens is its constant aperture for f3.5 along its entire focal length range (probably why the long end stops at 150mm) and it focuses close at 1m.
It’s manual focus with a push/pull zoom design. Not the easiest lens to use if you’re used to modern types of zoom lenses. Another factor which is usually not mentioned when talking about older lenses is it’s harder to focus these things when using a modern digital camera. The focusing screens on older cameras had a split prism as a focusing aid which is a big help, but modern focusing screens are designed for autofocus lenses and make focusing a little difficult. But apart from that it’s a fantastic lens, really sharp and very light to stick in a bag. Fantastic for details, landscapes, architecture and portraiture as long as the subject dosen’t move about much.
But look at what I ended up photographing. Birds in flight! This was with a Nikon D3x (not the quickest camera in the world but maybe the best pro digital still camera ever made). All I was after was interesting shapes/images.
I think it worked.
Seeya soon mb
