This is a famous lens among large-format photograpers. It is very good optically and a very good choice for extreme sharp landscape or portrait photography. It is able to reproduce the most subtle colour variations with extreme accuracy. While it was made to cover the 8 x 10″ format it is somehow limited for that film size as the image circle does not allow much of camera movements. Due to the extreme sharpness of this lens and colour reproduction, it is widely used not only on 8 x 10˝ cameras, but also with 5 x 7˝ and 4 x 5˝ cameras.
Nikkor-M lenses specs
| NIKKOR-M | 200mm f/8 | 300mm f/9 | 450mm f/9 |
| Lens construction | 4 elements in 3 groups | 4 elements in 3 groups | 4 elements in 3 groups |
| Max. aperture | f/8 | f/9 | f/9 |
| Min. aperture | f/ 64 | f/ 128 | f/ 128 |
| Angle of view | 45º (f/8) 55º (f/22) | 55º (f/9) 57º (f/22) | 50º (f/9) 52º (f/22) |
| Image circle | 166mm (f/8) 210mm (f/22) | 312mm (f/9) 325mm (f/22) | 420mm (f/9) 440mm (f/22) |
| Max. film size | 5 x 7˝ | 8 x 10˝ | 10 x 12˝ |
| Shutter size | Copal 0 | Copal 1 | Copal 3 |
| Shutter speeds | 1 to 1/500, T, B | 1 to 1/400, T, B | 1 to 1/125, T, B |
| Front filter size | 52mm | 52mm | 62mm |
| Flange-focal distance | 193.7mm | 290.0mm | 428.4mm |
| Weight | 180gr | 290gr | 640gr |
