A misty-eyed look back at the key moments in Nikon’s history through its best and most important cameras of all time.
Nikon is back. With the launch of the Nikon Z9, the most powerful camera in its history, the camera giant has again reasserted itself in its new mirrorless battle with Canon and Sony. But what exactly is the Z9’s family history, and who were its influential forebears? The Z9 is today’s crown jewel in a Japanese company that was formed way back in 1917 and whose westernized name Nikon was established in the 1980s. From its early days dabbling with S-series rangefinders in the 1950s to focusing efforts on its SLR line of cameras – a move that established Nikon among professional photographers ever since – Nikon has been a consistent presence. But it isn’t just a story of photographic innovation. After all, innovation doesn’t necessarily translate into long-term success – just ask the likes of Minolta and Kodak. Wait, you can’t. It’s probably fair to say that Nikon hasn’t been a big innovator, with a more recent tendency to arrive late to the party. Yet it is a company that has remained a key player in the camera industry for multiple decades. How? When you look back at the history of Nikon’s best cameras, what’s consistently striking is how Nikon appears to patiently assess the best existing technology around, then develop, refine and compile it into some of the most compelling and capable cameras available. Then arrive at the party at five-to-midnight with a bang. A classic example is its move to mirrorless, and now the Nikon Z9. Its first all-purpose, professional-level hybrid mirrorless camera is revolutionary and immediately challenges other leading cameras like the Sony A1 and Canon EOS R5. Thanks to its latest firmware update, it arguably eclipses both of them. But what are its spiritual predecessors? We’ve put our collective heads together to compile a list of the best and most important cameras of this illustrious company’s 100-year-plus history, starting with the most important. Further down, you can also find some honorable mentions that highlight some fascinating collaborations that also deserve a mention. But first, that (perhaps controversial) top ten… In a time when most professional photographers had a Leica or Zeiss rangefinder in hand, Nikon launched its first SLR camera to market, the Nikon F. Was the Nikon F a new concept? Not entirely. But what the camera did was bring together all the best technology available at the time into a single, more affordable modular camera system. It became the definitive 35mm camera of the era and established the SLR as the future. Over 14 years, almost one-million Nikon F units were made, plus it was superseded by more advanced models over the following decades, during which Nikon enjoyed a virtual market dominance until the autofocus era. Every existing Nikon SLR, DSLR and mirrorless camera since has taken some design cues from the Nikon F. Famously used to cover everything from the Vietnam war to NASA space programs (the F-Mount is the only ever lens mount used by NASA), the Nikon F is a reliable, bullet-proof modular 35mm camera with interchangeable screens and prisms, meaning it could be retrofitted with the latest tech, including advances in metering. Its features include a focal plane shutter with speeds up to 1/1000 sec, depth-of-field preview, flash sync, a removable back for 36 and 250-exposure reels, while its 60+ year-old F-Mount survived into the digital era. When we think of Nikon, this is where things truly began. Coming almost 60 years after Nikon’s watershed SLR moment that introduced the Nikon F and its F-Mount for lenses, the company well and truly marked its mirrorless future with the twin launch of the Nikon Z7 and Z6. Featuring its first new lens mount since the SLR days (asides from a brief foray with the Nikon 1-mount with 2.7x crop factor), Nikon’s Z-mount is the most versatile full-frame lens mount available today thanks to its wide diameter and short flange distance. The Nikon Z7 was the best specced Z-series camera at launch, offering the same 45MP resolution as the Nikon D850, plus many mirrorless benefits that include in-body image stabilization (IBIS), an EVF with real-time exposure information, new autofocus modes including Eye AF, a more versatile 4K video capture experience and silent shutter, all in a more compact body with great form factor. Not only is the Z7 is one of the most comfortable cameras in the hand, its Z-series lenses also perform better than F-Mount lenses for edge-to-edge clarity, better control over lens distortion and sharp detail at maximum aperture. For Nikon, the future is Z. The true digital camera pioneer was Kodak, but the Nikon D1 marked Nikon’s attempt to challenge Kodak’s professional DSLR dominance, proving to be a milestone in the development of pro DSLRs. Its design and controls were closely based on the Nikon F5, making the transition from film to digital as easy as possible for professional photographers.
