W-Nikkor·C 3.5cm f/2.5

By Nikon’s own account the fastest 35mm lens on the market at its July 1952 release, the W-Nikkor·C 3.5cm f/2.5 was Hideo Azuma’s (東秀夫) six-element, four-group Gauss design — nearly symmetrical, correspondingly low in distortion, and one of the best-sellers of the Nikon rangefinder system at roughly 28,000 units across Nikon S and Leica screw mounts, offered in both from the start. Its optics then outlived the system that created them: in 1963 Nippon Kogaku revised the curvatures and glass materials and built the same design into the amphibious W Nikkor 35mm f/2.5 of the original Nikonos — reason enough for Nikon’s own retrospective to count the design a 37-year long-seller.

July 1952 is Nikon’s own date; Pacific Rim Camera and Japanese Wikipedia say September, and the 1951 dates that occasionally circulate are uncited. Within the S-mount lineup it was the sensible middle path, and Nikon’s retrospective essay is candid that the design was already somewhat old-fashioned when it appeared. It held the lineup’s 35mm speed title only until Azuma’s own 3.5cm f/1.8 arrived in September 1956, but the balance it struck between performance and the price it sold under made it the volume seller of the three 35s — a balance that still holds on today’s used market, where the f/1.8 costs at least twice as much and the slow Tessar-type f/3.5 not much less. Handling is period-typical: on chrome and early black barrels the aperture is read and set from the front of the lens, and the earliest examples lack click-stops altogether. The S-mount version focuses via its own helicoid coupled with the body’s, down to 0.9 m; the Leica-thread version carries its own helicoid focusing to 3.5 feet, takes 34.5mm filters, and protrudes barely 23 mm from the camera body.

The serial record starts at 242801 — that start figure unconfirmed, with 242809 the earliest confirmed example — and tracks the barrel’s whole evolution: chrome-over-brass at 195 g with a narrow and then wide aperture scale, a smooth and then knurled mount ring, then the July 1956 switch to a black light-alloy barrel that cut the weight to 115 g, with infinity now marked oo. The red C — “coated” — disappeared from the engraving around 265053, dropped in line with Nikon’s post-1956 practice across the Nikkor line. The run closed with a scarce final version from about 1959, restyled in the 3.5cm f/1.8’s barrel with f-numbers at last on the outer rim of the aperture ring: about 1,211 by serial span, some marked LMIJ, and made in S mount only. The totals don’t quite reconcile — ~28,000 is the commonly cited figure, while the serial spans, which interleave S and Leica-thread lenses with no published split, sum to about 25,640.

The Nikonos chapter is the design’s real distinction. When Nikon released its amphibious camera in 1963, the standard lens was Azuma’s optical unit reworked — curvatures and glass materials revised — for underwater duty. Above water, its reputation today is remarkably consistent: reviewers find it sharp in the centre even wide open, gentle and low-contrast in the vintage manner, with moderate flare from the old single coating and its performance peak around f/8. Richard Haw calls it “the best option for somebody who wants a 35mm for their Nikon rangefinder setup” — the middle of the catalog, then and now.