The Nikon Rangefinder System - The Book
For us in the west, it all began in the Spring of 1950.
That was the time when LIFE magazine photojournalists David Douglas Duncan and Horace Bristol, in transit through Tokyo en route to cover the war raging in Korea, were persuaded by a young Japanese stringer to visit a camera factory in the Shinagawa district of the city.
Out of the chaos and rubble of World War II, Nippon Kogaku Kogyo Kaisha - Japan Optical Company Ltd., - struggled to rebuild its manufacturing programme; it had once employed 23,000 workers in more than 20 factories. Now it was reduced to 2 and a mere 1400 employees.
In the west, the regard for post war Japanese manufactured products of almost any description bordered on the dismissive. Certainly for cameras and optics, the general perception was that only Europe and the USA had the know-how to put together the high quality equipment demanded by professionals. But, as Duncan wrote to me years later after his Yankee Nomad was published in the 1960s, it was the young Japanese photographer's enthusiasm for the new products which persuaded him and Bristol to take time out of a busy schedule for the visit.
One can speculate on where Nippon Kogaku - the mighty and familiar Nikon of today, would be in the pecking order had...
Click to continue reading "The Nikon Rangefinder System - The Book"That was the time when LIFE magazine photojournalists David Douglas Duncan and Horace Bristol, in transit through Tokyo en route to cover the war raging in Korea, were persuaded by a young Japanese stringer to visit a camera factory in the Shinagawa district of the city.
Out of the chaos and rubble of World War II, Nippon Kogaku Kogyo Kaisha - Japan Optical Company Ltd., - struggled to rebuild its manufacturing programme; it had once employed 23,000 workers in more than 20 factories. Now it was reduced to 2 and a mere 1400 employees.
In the west, the regard for post war Japanese manufactured products of almost any description bordered on the dismissive. Certainly for cameras and optics, the general perception was that only Europe and the USA had the know-how to put together the high quality equipment demanded by professionals. But, as Duncan wrote to me years later after his Yankee Nomad was published in the 1960s, it was the young Japanese photographer's enthusiasm for the new products which persuaded him and Bristol to take time out of a busy schedule for the visit.
One can speculate on where Nippon Kogaku - the mighty and familiar Nikon of today, would be in the pecking order had...
Written by Ajax on January 15th, 2008 with no comments.
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