Old 135mm Nikkor

Among the many interesting objects my brother had left me (which included a casket of bullets) when he finished his 2-year studies in the U.S., one was a 135mm Nikkor. It stayed in my storage for a long long time. Since it still felt like my brother's stuff, I never thought of using it. Today while I was lamenting how Nikon's lenses felt "cheap and plastic" compared to the Zeiss, I remembered this old Nikkor. I took it out from its now dusty pouch. To my surprise, the lens was better crafted than the new Nikkors I own, and even after 20 years of no use, the focus barrel was butter smooth, just like my Zeiss. I put it side by side with my Zeiss 35mm and they looked like twins.

135mm Nikkor next to the 35mm Zeiss Zf.2.

The truly amazing thing is, since Nikon hasn't change their F-mount since the 70s, I can still use it with my D3X. I couldn't resist seeing how it performed. I took a few test shots. The first thing I noticed was it had a minimal focusing distance of 5-6 feet, a bit too long compared to a modern designed lens. The focus ring worked perfectly, as expected. The test images looked good on my D3X LCD but when I viewed them on my laptop, I could see the colors were dull. (To be fair, the lens needed to be sent back to Nikon to be cleaned up. I saw some mildew inside. I remembered that's why my brother gave it to me.) It's still usable, but does seem to show its age. Now I feel better about my newer, but uglier, Nikkors. Technology does improve the lens designs, you just have to tolerate their outlooks.

Test shot  taken with the 135mm Nikkor. The backward compatibility of Nikon F-mount is amazing.