Nikkorex Zoom 35
One of the interesting challenges to judging/evaluating/opining upon older film cameras is how much you take them out of, or keep them within, the historical context that surrounded them when they were first designed and introduced to the world. The view of a camera can be quite different depending upon that approach. It is sort of like the debate you sometimes hear around Ansel Adams' photography. Some photographers are much less impressed by Adams' reputation and quality of his images and cite how far landscape photography has come and the ways in which it has evolved since Adams' time, and they compare his historical work to contemporary work. Meanwhile some fans of Adams' photography root their opinions of his images in the historical context within which they were created. We make this comparison because we ourselves went through a bit of this process with the Nikkorex Zoom 35. Our initial reactions were to critique its size and bulky construction against our experiences with fixed zoom lens cameras that came much later than it. But then we started to look a bit more into the history of this camera and learned some of the ways it was a bit of a trailblazer and that gave us a new perspective with which to view it.
You can think of the Nikkorex Zoom 35 as generation 2a of Nippon Kogaku's Nikkorex series. The first Nikkorex 35 camera was launched in 1960 as a low cost, more consumer-friendly companion to the flagship Nikon F camera. Nippon Kogaku designed it with a fixed 5cm f2.5 lens. There was no instant return mirror, no mirror lock up feature, it used a mirror-based viewfinder instead of glass pentaprism, and as mentioned, you could not change lenses. All these elements were designed to keep the price lower and to keep the camera simpler. The Nikkorex 35 met with enough success that in 1962 the Nikkorex 35 II was released. The next year, 1963, saw the introduction of the Nikkorex Zoom 35 that essentially added a 43-86mm zoom lens onto a Nikkorex 35 II body.
Zoom lenses are technological innovation that we largely take for granted these days. Their novelty has long worn off for us. But in the early 1960s, photography was just beginning to enter the era of the zoom lens. At the time, Nippon Kogaku really only had a single zoom lens for the Nikon F and zooming lenses had only really been available for still photography since about 1959. Nipon Kogaku's engineers were thinking ahead and seeing the vast benefits that a lens that could change focal lengths with the twist of a wrist would offer to photographers. Internally they had been working on a zoom lens that could cover a standard focal length with some room on either side. Initially they had prototypes for a 35-85mm zoom lens but this lens was big and heavy (it had a filter thread of 78mm and weighed over two pounds). So they started tinkering with the focal length, one millimeter at a time. Eventually they ended up with a range of 43-86mm that had a fixed f3.5 aperture throughout the zoom range. This lens would be rolled out for the Nikon F system in late 1963 but it was also fitted to the Nikkorex 35 II, producing the Nikkorex Zoom 35. The engineers at Nippon Kogaku figured that if you had a zooming lens that covered most of your needs, might as well produce it as a fixed lens camera. Of course, over the following decades, cameras with fixed zooming lenses would become more and more popular and become more and more ergonomical and better designed, but this Nikkorex Zoom 35 was one of the first of its type. It really did offer a luxury that consumers were not used to: a simple, relatively inexpensive camera that allowed quick changing of the focal length.
And that is where the Nikkorex Zoom 35 fits into history. You are welcome to weigh this camera however suits you. Compare it to more modern cameras if you like, or place it within its historical context. Personally, we now see it a bit from both angles. It is a big, heavy, blocky, somewhat inelegant camera with a zoom lens that has kind of a weird and awkward range of focal lengths. At the same time, it was also remarkably innovative and helped paved the way for many new lenses and cameras that would supersede it. It was a key step in that evolution.
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