Komura 80mm f/1.8

Released in 1957 — or 1958, depending on which published account you trust — the Komura 80mm f/1.8 was the boldest lens the small Tokyo maker Sankyo Koki had yet attempted: its first large-aperture design and one of the initial four lenses the company offered in Nikon rangefinder mount. Optically it is a five-element, four-group Ernostar with a cemented rear group, and it draws exactly the way that pedigree promises. Where Nippon Kogaku’s own Sonnar-formula Nikkor-P·C 8.5cm f/2 renders with classical discipline, the Komura wide open wraps its subject in a low-contrast, dream-like glow, and its out-of-focus highlights deform toward the frame edges and dissolve softly — a signature the Japanese reviewer koiWide affectionately calls “jellyfish bokeh.” Stop the preset diaphragm down a few clicks and it sharpens up into a well-behaved portrait telephoto.

Sankyo Koki was founded in 1951 and began selling lenses under the Komura name in 1955, staying in business until 1980. Its Nikon-mount line ran from the late 1950s into the early 1960s: a first-hand Japanese account puts the initial four at 35mm f/2.8, 80mm f/1.8, 105mm f/2.8, and 135mm f/3.5, with more telephotos following into the early 1960s. Like fellow third-party maker Tanaka, the company marked its Nikon-mount lenses with an “N” on the barrel, though some late lenses went unmarked. The 80mm f/1.8 was not an S-mount exclusive — it was also sold in Leica screw, M42, Contax, and Exakta mounts — and an f/1.8 short telephoto was genuinely adventurous territory for a small independent lens-maker in the late 1950s. koiWide’s verdict is that the ambition went largely unrewarded — the lens sold poorly against the pull of camera-makers’ own glass — which is one reason every mount of it is scarce today.

The Nikon-mount lens is finished in black with wide chrome stripes, carries the “N” barrel engraving, and was supplied with a dedicated external finder. The aperture is a twelve-blade preset unit stopping down to f/16, and the filter thread is a slightly awkward 48mm. At least two versions exist, one distinguished by a silver aperture ring, but no serial ranges have been worked out for them, and no production figures survive for any mount. Even the original price is lost: the only surviving Komura price list, EPOI’s 1965 sheet, covers the Leica-screw and SLR lines, and no S-mount list has ever surfaced. What remains is the lens itself — rare in every mount, and the first of the Ernostar portrait lenses Sankyo Koki would bring to the Nikon rangefinder system, with the Ernostar-type 105mm f/2 following the same recipe a few years later.