What camera was my 3.5 CM/F3.5 Nikkor in LTM built for?

I have an ancient Nikkor 3.5 CM/f3.5 in LTM. What brand of camera did these

get sold with? Tower? Nicca? Any idea what year this lens was built? The serial

number is 4279xx.

 

 

Can anyone suggest a website with any info about this lens? I need basic things

like number of elements/groups, is it coated, etc? Thanks.

I think Nikon also sold lenses individually in LTM as an off brant option for Leica users... much like Sigma and Tamron still do today.

not just for Leica users - off the top of my head, Canon, Minolta, Tanack, Nicca, Leotax, and I

believe Yashica all made rangefinders that used the Leica screw mount. In this country, the

Tower brand (Sears Roebuck) was used to market cameras with Nicca bodies and Nikon

lenses (but not all Tower cameras are LTM: it was just a marketing name used for cameras

built to a variety of specs by a variety of maufacturers).

If I remember my history, I believe that early RF Nikkors were made in LTM and Contax as well as Nikon's own mount. The early Nikon rangefinders sold in Japan were first 24mm x 32mm and then 24mm x 34mm before moving up to full frame. I believe that Leica and Contax users were so impressed by the quality of the Nikkor lenses, that this helped establish Nikon as a major player in supplying photojournalists. Many of these lenses were field tested during the Korean War. If you search old magazines from that time era, you have a fair chance of seeing images made with some of these Nikkors.

The old 13.5cm F3.5 Nikkor Telephoto commonly was sold in the Nikon RF mount; the LTM; and with some even made for the Exakta 35mm slr mount.

Optically the lens is a copy of the Leica f:3.5/35mm Elmar (4 elements in 3 groups like a Tessar), but it is coated, and the barrel is like the Summaron, with aperture around the outside, but a rotating mount.<P>I had one in the early '50s, and thought it was the sharpest lens I'd ever seen. Lately I've happened across some of those old KodACHROMES, and they are incredibly fuzzy and detailless.

Nikon's 4 great rangefinder lenses were the 50/3.5 Micro, 50/1.4, 85/2, and 105/2.5. Their wide angles weren't as good as the Canon glass of that era. The 50/1.4 Nikor can still hold its own against the pre-aspheric Leica Summilux and the 85/2 Nikkor is a lot better than the early 90/2 Summicrons.

AFAIK the first lenses for the Canon LTM rangefinders were made by Nikon. Later they used these lens designs for their own rangefinder bodies with Contax mount. This is the reason why original Contax lenses are not fully compatible with Nikon rangefinder bodies - the rangefinder is designed for a lens with precisely 50mm focal length while the Contax had a standard lens with 53mm.

 

Anyhow, Canon very soon started making their own lenses for their rangefinder bodies and probably Nikon kept on manufacturing LTM lenses to satisfy the LTM owners no matter who made the bodies. There were quite a few manufacturers making LTM rangefinders in Japan in the 1950s and probably there was some demand for lenses.

In old advertisements from the early post-war era, Nikon advertised their lenses for a wide range of cameras. Yours may be either for the Leica itself or for the LTM Canon camera. There were many other LTM cameras in the post-war era when the Germans had lost all their rights under the Allied Control Commission rulings on war reparations.

Of course, I meant the early Korean War era, but there are some Nikon ads earlier. As many people know, the early Canon production cameras had Nikkor (Nippon-Kogaku) lenses (1935-46 or so). These had Nippon-Kogaku mounts, and the Leica mount was adopted after the war (ACC ruling, perhaps?)

Maybe I'm a conspericy theorist at heart, but I believe that the reason that Nikon was designed with a different back-focus than the Contax was so they could sell their "C" lenses designed to properly fit the Contax, while knowing that Zeiss would never condescend to making lenses to fit their Japanese competition! Just clever marketing, not engineering.