[Leica] F3 sales and Apo-Els

[Mike Johnston <michaeljohnston@ameritech.net>]

B.D.: >>>Which raises an interesting question, Peter: You you have any
idea how many F3s Nikon sells each year?<<<


Very few. It's selling out of NOS (new old stock) and they've priced it
high to keep sales low, which in turn allows them to stretch out the old
stock and keep it as a "current" item for longer. When the NOS runs out,
that's all for the old F3. Nikon has not actually built them for many
years now and will never actually build them again.

Interesting story: the best two enlarging lenses ever made available for
purchase by  consumers were the two Apo-El-Nikkors, a 105mm f/5.6 and a
210mm, I believe it was. They were last produced in the 1970s and the
cheaper of the two, the 105mm (optimized for 6x6 and 6X and
diffraction-limited wide open), was available for $2,400 or so as late
as the early 1990s. They sold out of NOS through Nikon Special Optics
for two decades. When NOS ran out--I can't remember exactly when it was
but maybe around 1993 or so--Nikon Special Optics did a cost analysis
for an additional run so they could keep them in the catalog. What they
determined was that the 105mm Apo-El produced in the '90s would have to
sell for a retail price of well over twenty-five thousand dollars, which
of course not even the specialist market would support. So naturally
they opted not to do another run and killed the product.

I had a bead on one of the last of the NOS 105mm Apo-Els for $2,200 and
couldn't raise the money at the time. A shame, because it will literally
never be possible to buy an enlarging lens that good again--the
economics of the market forbid it. Not that I really need a lens better
than my cherry-picked Apo-Rodagons, but it would have been nice to have.

- --Mike