Issue No. 52 The Periodical for the Nikon Devotee HAPPY ANNIVERSARY It is well known that Nikon still making them as I write started life as an optical this. company. They began when three companies merged in So without further delay let 1917 and formed the Japanese me say that the new camera optical company, Nippon is based on the flagship Nikon Kogaku (Japan Optical). It F5. The F5 is already a super seems like moments ago that camera and the changes made we were celebrating seventy- are cosmetic in nature. The five years with the opening of word superficial seems our Nippon Kogaku Room. inappropriate due to the That was in 1992. As we have significance of the changes but previously mentioned, Nikon below the skin breathes a did not start life as a camera normal Nikon F5. maker. That said they are awfully good at it. No, Nikon In my mind’s eye I had been did not make cameras until they legendary high-speed cameras building up a picture of the produced the Nikon I in 1948. but little else. Notable recent camera. My imagination was ones are the F3 based F3 limited So fresh from the celebration of and the Year of the Dog FM2/T. eighty years of optical excellence What these two have in common Continued on page 2... Nikon are faced with the dilemma with the new camera is that they of how to mark fifty years of were designed with the Japanese camera production. It could be market in mind. Featured in this edition of the argued that they have left Grays of Westminster Gazette... sufficient impression, with fifty They considered restricting sales years of cameras out there, not of this camera to Japan only. The • Tony Munday - Happy Anniversary to mention the fact that forty original plan was produce two • Coolpix 900 Update years of them all carry the same thousand cameras and sell them • Nick Wynne - A beginners guide... lens mount. The obvious answer all in Japan. We have it on good • Acrobatics is to produce a special camera. authority that they had plans to • Tony Munday - New Compacts earmark some of these for a • Mark Jones - Large Format II Unlike a certain German certain Nikon-only shop. A last- • Gray Levett - Nikon Legend - Part manufacturer Nikon’s history is minute change of mind led them LI not littered with special editions. to produce a further thousand for Yes, they have produced the odd the rest of the World. In fact the titanium version and the tense is wrong there as they are 1 fired by various data. Some cover is still black; that said, it is protected in transit by an arrived by telephone. Most a less matt black. But that is not cardboard sleeve. The instruction fascinating were many short the only change. Gone is the booklet is let into a panel of card notes from anonymous fax familiar Nikon logo. It is replaced which sits between presentation machines bearing the telltale with the former Nikon logo. The case and the sleeve. signs of a Japanese hand writing script is styled to match that of English script. More recently I the first rangefinder. The change So we have a special edition of the eyed transparencies of what is subtle, yet the message is flagship F5 and a limited one at looked like an adapted F5, a powerful. that. We have been quietly mock-up if you like. All of these offering the camera to selected gave me a good idea of what to Moving on, the rear of the camera customers for a while now and the expect, as well as providing is relatively unchanged. The order list is significant. Due to something of a story behind the discreet Nippon Kogaku triangle the limited production of the camera’s production. shape logo graces the battery camera it is folly to make any firm pack, to the left of the LCD commitment regarding the Today (mid-August) I have been (Liquid Crystal Display). It has numbers but we are confident of fortunate enough to see the a small 50 below it. There was being able to fulfil the orders we camera. I can see that the some debate whether this was to have taken thus far. photographs did not tell the full be an 80. Clearly Nikon decided story. The top covers that form they were marking fifty years of Having done so much to limit this the shoulders of the camera cameras rather eighty years in F5 one might think that Nikon looked silver in the shots; the data existence. Hopefully the would have applied an said they should be grey. They photographs with this article will outrageously high price tag. are certainly a metallic colour and show this in sufficient detail for However, the truth is far from it has a slight bronze tinge to it. those unfamiliar with the design. this and they have set the price Grey is the colour of the special at £2300.00. We are expecting BF-1A body cap. Nikon have also The camera arrives in a special to ship cameras some time in used grey instead of the bright presentation case. The outer September and due to the nature red flash fitted to the handgrip of surfaces of the case are a mottled of the item buyers should be the standard offering. So we have light grey. Opening the box prepared for a wait. a Guigiaro design, without the reveals a striking gold lining. The legendary red stripe! camera and a strap bearing a by Tony Munday special inscription nestle into the The familiar titanium viewfinder padded inner. The box itself is Coolpix 900 Update Nikon UK were very pleased capable of. crop from a shot up to A4 size. with the Coolpix 900 and had Whilst the result showed the high hopes for it. I think it is We have been using it to record printer was behind modern fair to say that it has exceeded equipment, particularly rare technology, the quality of the their expectations. Magazine collectables, and some of the Coolpix 900 still managed to after magazine have been shots will have appeared on our shine through. giving the camera rave website by the time you read reviews. Having started to use this. For this kind of on-screen We continue to recommend the it I can see why. The camera work the Coolpix is way over premium bundle with larger is easy to use and produces specified; it needs a good size memory card and mains supply results that are above the print to put it to the test. I tried as the only way to buy it. The level the bare specification a print on my aged colour inkjet price is currently £850.00 2 suggests it should be and unintentionally printed a including VAT. THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO THE WHAT? Something has entered our lives If you choose to get trained to Imagine if you had a computer at which is variously called “The have access to all the information home just for your own use, a Internet” or “The World Wide stored in this computer, you could personal computer, an electronic Web” or “The Information Super- yourself establish that flight 123 butler as it were. You notice Highway”. These terms attempt still has some seats available. If outside that it has started to rain, to describe something new by you were at Nikon, you could find re-trouser the money you were comparison to something out from a computer screen if AF going to spend at the newsagents familiar. This is a handy use of 20-35mm zoom lenses were in on a magazine and stay indoors. language such as describing a stock. Alternatively you could Deftly, your fingers a blur at the parsnip as “like a carrot but phone up and ask them. controls, you call for the same whitish rather than orange” stock information from computer Or a lithium AA battery as “like The information is what you files that the dealers have made, a conventional AA battery but a require and you take steps to and along the phone line to your fraction of the weight and with acquire it. Classified adverts house comes the very information three times the life”. contain vast quantities of that you want. information. Look at the second- Well let’s start with the question, hand section of a photographic It’s as you suspected, only Grays “Do I really care anyway?” magazine. Thousands of lenses of Westminster have one! You Maybe you don’t have much to do and so on are listed out. Well now have the information you with computers but have noticed what I don’t know about wanted, quickly and simply. You them in places you have visited. computers would fill a very large, didn’t get wet in the rain and the You’ve seen people looking at well, computer, but if it holds coffee is now nicely brewed. It screens just like television information and is designed to might just be the coffee but you screens to establish whether a help me I’ll always be interested. begin to think you might be product/flight is in stock or warming to computers! discontinued, partly or fully For example, how long would it booked. You are seeking take to scan every advert in 2 or More next month and by the way information and this screen 3 photographic magazines to find you’ve just benefited from the displays it.