In 1957, Nikon was the first to introduce an electric motor drive for a 35mm camera. It was designed for the Nikon SP rangefinder model and had a separate and rather bulky (by today's standards) battery pack. Back then, motor driven cameras were only used by "professionals". Well, nowadays, motor-driven camera are so common and become a standard feature in a SLR. Prior to the mid-eighties, not all SLR came with a built in film advance mechanism. Whatever, a motor drive does offers two distinct advantages over its manual film advance counterpart: (1 ) instantaneous cocking of the shutter after each shot; and (2) sequence shooting.
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In the single shooting mode, a motor drive automatically advances the film and cocks the camera's shutter after each shot. Even though most photographers can manually advance the film almost as fast as a motor drive, sometimes they forget to do so and end up missing the picture, because the camera was not ready. In the same vein, many cameramen pull their eye away from the eyepiece when stroking the advance lever, thus causing a break in the continuity of shooting. In the continuous mode, a camera with motor drive can produce a sequence of shots of fast action, so that form and movement can be analyzed and studied frame by frame. |
The MD-11 Motor Drive was the first serious Motor Drive design for the Nikon's Nonprofessional oriented camera. Prior to this, Nikon did produced a Winder for the Electronic Nikkormat ELW and Nikon EL2. It was a slow two frames per seconds winder. When the more compact FM and FE were introduced in 1977 and 1978, the MD-11 was designed to fit both the compact Nikon FM and FE cameras without modification, is reliable and versatile enough for professional use, yet is so light and easy to operate that even the beginning photographer will want to own one. Eight AA penlight batteries fit into a special battery clip in its base and power the FE up to 3.5 fps at shutter speeds of 1/125 second and above. When the MD-11 is mounted on the FE, the camera/motor drive combination is almost the same size and weight as a traditional larger-sized 35. Just turn the motor drive on, rotate the mode selector to "Single" or "Continuous," and push the trigger button. The MD-11 was discontinued in 1980 and replaced by the MD-12 - which is still in production. There are operational differences between these two drives (Actually affecting more on the FM rather than the FE on the camera portion), I have a separate sections as shared resources for the MD-11 and the MD-12, which you can refer for more info. Both the MD-11 and MD-12 have the similar physical appearance In fact, it has a very good human-engineering design, the hand grip on the drive is truly a work of art and went through many prototype design stages before its final adoption. Not only does the grip fit the hand comfortably, but it acts as a convenient handle when carrying the FE at arm's length. It stood faithfully and reliably for the last 20 years and I don't think any Nikon users can deny the fact both the motor drives are a classic piece on their own. It may sound age now, many even complaint about the lack of trigger button vertically. Oh.. this may not be an built in feature, but Nikon does have this as an accessory since the late seventies.
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W A R N I N G: The New G-SERIES Nikkor lenses have no aperture ring on the lens, they CANNOT ADJUST APERTURES with any of these manual focus Nikon FE series SLR camera models; please ignore some portion of the content contained herein this site where it relates.
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Others:- Nikon AF-TTL Speedlights | SB-20 (1986) | SB-22 (1987) | SB-23 | SB-24 (1988) | SB-25 (1991/2) | SB-26 (1994) | SB-27(1997) | SB-28 (1997) | Nikon SB-29(s) (2000) | Nikon SB-30 (2003) | Nikon SB-600 (2004) | Nikon SB-800 (2003) Nikon AF-TTL Speedlight DX-Series: Nikon SB-28DX (1999) | SB-50DX (2001) | SB-80DX (2002)
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Nikon Auto Focus Nikkor lenses:- Main
Index Page
Nikon Manual Focus Nikkor lenses:- Fisheye-Nikkor Lenses - Circular | Full Frame |
Ultrawides Lenses - 13mm15mm18mm20mm | Wideangle Lenses - 24mm28mm35mm | Standard Lenses - 45mm 50mm 58mm | Telephoto
Lenses - 85mm105mm135mm180mm & 200mm | Super-Telephoto Lenses - 300mm 400mm 500mm 600mm 800mm 1200mm |
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Special
Application lenses: Micro-Nikkor Lenses - 50mm~55mm -60mm 85mm -105mm 200mm Micro-Zoom 70-180mm Perspective Control (PC) - 28mm 35mm PC-Micro 85mm Dedicated Lenses for Nikon F3AF: AF 80mm f/2.8 | AF 200mm f/3.5 EDIF Depth of Field Control (DC): 105mm 135mm Medical Nikkor: 120mm 200mm Reflex-Nikkor Lenses - 500mm 1000mm 2000mm Others: Noct Nikkor | OP-Nikkor | UV Nikkor 55mm 105mm | Focusing Units | Bellows-Nikkor 105mm 135mm Nikon Series E Lenses: 28mm35mm50mm100mm135mm | E-Series Zoom lenses: 36~72mm75~150mm70~210mm |
MF Zoom-Nikkor Lenses: 25~50mm | 28~45mm | 28~50mm | 28~85mm | 35~70mm | 36~72mm E | 35~85mm | 35~105mm | 35~135mm | 35~200mm | 43~86mm | 50~135mm | 50~300mm | 70~210mm E | 75~150mm E | 80~200mm | 85~250mm | 100~300mm | 180~600mm | 200~400mm | 200~600mm | 360~1200mm | 1200~1700mm
Tele-Converters: TC-1 | TC-2 | TC-200 | TC-201 | TC-300 | TC-301 | TC-14 | TC-14A | TC-14B | TC-14C | TC-14E | TC-16 | TC-16A | TC-20E
Recommended links to understand more technical details
related to the Nikkor F-mount and production Serial Number:
http://rick_oleson.tripod.com/index-153.html by: my
friend, Rick Oleson
http://www.zi.ku.dk/personal/lhhansen/photo/fmount.htm by: Hansen,
Lars Holst
http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/hardwares/nikonfmount/lens2.htm
http://www.photosynthesis.co.nz/nikon/serialno.html
W A R N I N
G: The
New G-SERIES Nikkor lenses have no
aperture ring on the lens, they CANNOT ADJUST APERTURES
with any of these manual focus Nikon
FE series SLR camera models; please ignore some portion of the content contained
herein this site where it relates.
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Back | Main Index Page of Nikkor Resources
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Back | Main Index Page of Pictorial
History of Nikon SLRs
| Message Board | for your Nikkor optics ("shared" because I do wish some of you to expose to other's perspective as well. Isn't it a sad sate to see photography has to be segmented into different camps from the use of various labels)
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A contributing effort to Michael C Liu's Classic Nikon Site.
Credit: Chuck Hester for some of his beautiful images used in this site; Ted Wengelaar®, Holland for his continuous flow of input; Lars Holst Hansen, Danish 'Hawkeye' who shares the same passion; Mr Poon from Poon photo for their input; Ms Miss Rissa (Sales Manager) & members of the Technical Service dept. of Shriro Malaysia, local distributor of Nikon cameras in Malaysia & Singapore, in providing so many useful input to make this site possible. Special thanks to Mr MC Lau, who has helped with his images of the MF-12 databack. Michael Tan, Pertama Photo (603-2926505) for lending his original Titanium Shutter Display Unit. Dave Hoyt who has prepared the introductory page and offer some images of his FE2 in this site.. Hiura Shinsaku, Nikomat ML, Japan for his contribution on all the various images; A contributing site to a long lost friend on the Net. Note: Certain content and images appeared in this site were either scanned from official marketing leaflets, brochures published by Nikon and/or contribution from surfers who claimed originality of their own work to publish in this site based on educational merits. The creator of this site will not be responsible for any discrepancies that may arise from such possible dispute except rectifying them after verification."Nikon", "Nikkormat", "Nippon Kokagu KK" & "Nikkor" are registered tradename of Nikon Corporation Inc., Japan. Made witha PowerMac.