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Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

it actually beat the Nikon F to market, a camera often thought of as the first professional SLR camera.

The Nikon F is an early 35mm SLR with a pentaprism. Professional SLR’s go back to the 19th century. For example Graflex. http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Graflex_reflex_models

Here is Dorothea Lange with a Graflex SLR. https://www.shorpy.com/Dorothea-Lange?size=_original#caption It may even be the camera she used for Migrant Mother.

Prior to the Nikon F there were 35mm SLR cameras with other types of finders, e.g. waist level.

Hasselblad produced its first consumer SLR’s in the late 1940’s and the iconic 500 series was launched two years prior to the Nikon F (1957 v 1959). https://www.hasselblad.com/inspiration/history/first-consume...

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You're right in that the Graflex SLRs were first, and certainly intended for professionals. It was the compactness of the 35mm SLR which seemed revolutionary. But it reality it was evolutionary, there were several series of SLRs for 120 and 127 film, later there was the Contaflex, 35mm Exakta and others with eye-level finders. The Exakta series was exceptionally popular and the KMZ Start was by comparison obscure. The Nikon F was a very fine camera, but what makes it a professional camera where these others are not?

>The Nikon F was a very fine camera, but what makes it a professional camera where these others are not?

The Nikon F was the first SLR that was so rugged and had such good lenses that it really made professional press photographers switch from (mostly Leica) rangefinders.

As you say there were plenty of SLRs before but they were more seen as fancy cameras for consumers (also there were all kinds of limitations like the mirror not automatically returning for instance) and the optics were usually inferior to rangefinder lenses due to the need to account for the extra space for the mirror box. The viewfinders were also often quite dim.

Compactness was already available in range finders. Notably Leitz’s Leica line. And of course the proliferation of Soviet models inspired by it, e.g. FED. Or in the US, the Argus C series.

Definitely the rangefinders were more compact, but they didn't have through-the-lens viewing. What I meant to point out was the progression of smaller-sized SLR bodies and film formats, the Nikon F being a later development on that path, not a first.

The F didn't really had a "first", it's distinguished by being "the first" to bundle a lot of previous developments in one reliable package.

(The F system did follow the pattern of most contemporaries to design stuff so that it would do what is needed now, with little regard for future developments. That's why Nikon introduced Ai (and then very shortly after that, Ai-s) mount variations, or why Canon had like five variations of the FD mount; almost all companies operated like that, with very few exceptions such as Konica AR)

You are both right. Leica brought compactness as early as the 1910s with 35mm film, but struggled with “long” lenses due to the natural limitation that comes with rangefinders. Then Nikon came along in the 1950s and brought us compact through-the-lens focusing for “long” lenses.

Which one did the professionals end up using? Go on and search the web for some photos of war photographers in Vietnam and see what is hanging around their necks. Spoiler, usually one or two Leica Ms and a Nikon F for the times when you need to keep your distance.

What you're saying starting with Leica, and then "Nikon came along" is at the root of my comments about this article. There are more than 40 years of innovation between the ur-Leica in 1914 and the Nikon F. For a famous example, have a look at the movie "Rear Window" (1954), specifically the still shots of Jimmy Stewart's character using an Exakta with a very long telephoto lens. The SLR made long lenses practical in a compact camera. But Nikon wasn't there first.

The Nikon SLRs picked up a reputation after being used by professional photographers to cover the Vietnam war years after the release of the first Nikon F. Were they professional cameras before professionals started using them?

I have failed to mention the Asahi-Pentax, released in 1957, which had everything the Nikon had two years later. Why is the Nikon F the first professional 35mm camera? What made it special enough to obscure years of camera development?

The first Leicas were sold in the mid 1920's. Leitz had to also roll out the infrastructure to support developing 35mm for stills and printing the smaller format.

There was a war on in the teens.

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