In keeping with the trend toward electronic and compact SLR cameras, we released Nikomat EL (weighing 780 g) with an electronic shutter in 1972, and Nikomat ELW in February 1976.

The Nikomat ELW inherited the aperture-priority automatic exposure control of EL and newly incorporated the coupling and electric contact point for automatic film winding with the auto-winder AW-1, and a power switch on the ring around the shutter release button in addition to that on the film advance lever.

The Nikomat ELW with the auto-winder AW-1 won the Good Design Mark in 1976.

Our SLR cameras with the TTL exposure meter adopted the full-aperture metering for exposure measurement. However, it was then necessary to let the exposure meter on a camera learn different maximum apertures depending on the lens used by turning the aperture ring to the full and returning it to the original position, after mounting the lens to engage the shoe on the aperture ring and the exposure meter coupling pin on the camera body.

The AI System involved changes in the design of the lens diaphragm mechanism; next, we focused lens production on AI Nikkor. The AI Nikkor lenses were compatible with our existing SLR cameras (F mount), and most of the existing Nikkor lenses were made to accommodate the AI System through some modifications.

In April 1976, the shutter speed-priority AE SLR camera which offered features such as a microcomputer (configured with CPU in the form of a single module on a flexible board), unitized internal mechanisms, 50 mm f/1.4 standard lens, and prices far below 100,000 yen appeared in the home market. In response to this, the market trend of AE SLR cameras was directed towards low-end models.

In order to accommodate the trend toward compact size (142 x 89.5 x 60 mm), reduced weight (590 g) and lower prices, we brought out an AI-compatible new model Nikon FM (the model with 50 mm f/2, put on sale at a suggested retail price of 81,000 yen) in May 1977.

The Nikon FM sold well, though its shutter was mechanical and involved manual exposure control, and then, in April in the next 1978, the aperture-priority AE SLR camera Nikon FE (with a 50 mm f/1.8 at 95,000 yen) with the electronically controlled shutter went on sale.

The FE was favorably received and the sales increased, reaching the sales volume of 250,000 per year and a total turnover of 10 billion yen for three years from FY 1979 to FY 1981, which made this model a mainstay of the sales in Nippon Kogaku K.K.

In addition, in response to the request by the U.S. market for lower-priced models, the compact-sized (134.5x 86 x 54 mm) and lightweight (460 g) AE SLR camera Nikon EM was introduced in March 1979 for beginners and women, and the export was started.

We commissioned Giorgetto Giugiaro (1938- ), a famous Italian car and industrial designer, to take charge of the final design of the exterior of EM similarly as in the case of the exterior design of the flagship model Nikon F3.

A year after its introduction, also in Japan in March 1980, Nikon EM (with 50 mm f/1.8, 60,000 yen) went on sale in conjunction with the release of the flagship model Nikon F3, and the sales volume of EM in FY 1980 exceeded 400,000 in total both at home and abroad.

The EM kept gaining favor and the sales volume reached 1.53 million in total at the end of 1984.

In response to the introduction of the low-end EM, also for the lenses, a new lower-priced Nikon Lens Series E was brought out at home in Japan with the three models (50 mm f/1.8, 35 mm f/2.5, and 100 mm f/2.8), and in May 1980 Zoom 75 - 150 mm f/3.5 was added.

In May of 1981, all models of Nikon Lens Series E, which had been marketed at home in Japan, were refreshed in the exterior and standardized to the AI Nikkor lenses.

In addition, in July 1980 NIKONOS IV-A was released as a successor to NIKONOS III through a complete change of the mechanisms involving the substitution of mechanical shutter by the electronically controlled type, incorporation of TTL metering aperture-priority AE and ease of film changing by opening/closing the back cover.

In the fall of 1978 when the development of F3 reached the completion of prototype, we were asked by NASA to supply the cameras for the first space shuttle (Space Transportation System: STS) to be launched in 1981. This request came based on our track record of supplying Nikon Photomic FTN for Apollo Program and Skylab Program in 1970s.
NASA provided the exacting specifications that the automatic exposure control cameras should be supplied in one year and a half and that the camera should be able to take a total of 250 pictures and allow film changing even during photography. However, we accepted the order believing that we could fulfill the requirements by applying the technical know-how for F3 under development and drawing on the experience at the Apollo Program. We succeeded as scheduled and developed a "Big" camera for the long 250-exposure film, and a "Small" camera for 72-exposure "thin film", and delivered the two models "Big" and "Small" in May 1980.

The Nikon F3, which was under commercialization in conjunction with the development of the NASA specifications-based cameras, was released in March 1980 as the flagship electronically controlled aperture-priority AE SLR camera. The body color was black only, and the suggested retail price was 175,000 yen (with 50 mm f/1.4).

The exterior of the integrated camera body and motor drive MD-4 was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro. The novel design aiming at a simple form with a concave section on the front of the body for gripping and the impressive red vertical line exerted a large influence on subsequent camera designs.

The specifications of Nikon F3 at the time of release are listed below.

Nikon F3 came with many more functions, surpassing the F2 series. It was designed with a higher-precision exposure control, and the TTL metering through viewfinder was replaced by the TTL through-body metering.

The reflex mirror was a newly developed "pinhole mirror" which contained about 50,000 pinholes (20 µm x 30 µm (micrometer) elliptical non-deposit section) on the mirror surface to form the translucent central part.

The TTL through-body metering system was adopted because of the following advantageous features.

In addition, the use with the motor drive MD-4 allowed using the power supply (size AA battery x 8 or NiCd battery MN-2) for MD-4 to power the F3 body, which helped save the consumption of the two 1.55V SR44 (former known as G13) silver batteries installed for the camera unit. In this way, the increased efficiency of the driving system and power-saving design with the use of the LCD contributed to the achievement of the energy-efficient camera.

In 1982, the titanium body Nikon F3/T was released.

The first use of titanium for the camera body was in 1979, when titanium materials were used for the pentaprism cover, top cover and bottom cover of the Nikon F2 to increase their strength and corrosion resistance.

In 2001, it was announced that production of the Nikon F3 series was discontinued.

The 4 product lines were referred to as Super Nikon, Simple Nikon, Compact Nikon, and Little Nikon, respectively, and the product strategy was successfully established to accommodate a wide variety of consumers from beginners to professional photographers.

For the interchangeable lenses, a newly designed wide zoom 28 - 45 mm f/4.5 of retrofocus type was released in August 1975 as the world's first full-fledged wide zoom lens.

Our consumer-oriented attitude was clearly demonstrated by the fact that the lens mount remained unchanged when the AI System was adopted for all models of SLR cameras for ease of operation, showing consideration for the users of a total of over 5 million Nikkor lenses. We also gave consideration to modify the conventional lenses to accommodate the AI System in response to requests by users of conventional lenses, and in fact, we made most of the conventional lenses compatible with the AI System.

For this reason, a total of 23 service persons were dispatched to the U.S., Europe, Near and Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Oceania between February and August in 1977 to adapt the conventional lenses to AI System.

In addition, in order to meet the long-standing request by users that they wished to enlarge the films shot by Nikon cameras with Nikon enlarging apparatus, in November 1975 we introduced Nikon Enlarger RA-350 Auto Focus specifically designed for 35 mm format film.

The RA-350 was configured with the mechanical type of automatic focusing mechanism which eliminated the need for later focusing, once proper focus was attained. The enlarger provided higher repeatability with proper number control attained by using it with the provided enlarging lens EL-Nikkor 50 mm f/2.8.

The light source provided the condenser-diffuser-type illumination using spherical reflector, of original design, to suppress possible uneven illumination.

Production of RA-350 was discontinued in December 1980.

In December, a Miss Smile Contest was held to promote the ease-of-operation of EM, and it became the focus of public attention as the photo contest of smiling faces rather than a beauty contest, with a total number of photo submissions exceeding 20,000. The ads announcing the results of the contest were placed in camera magazines for young people including "Sharaku" (Shogakukan Inc.) and "CAMERAMAN" (Motor Magazine Sha) for a total of 11 times in about a year.

In August 1981, the "Nikon Young Girls Contest" was announced to improve the image and brand name of EM.

TV advertising was also active. The CF of EM gave people a lot to talk about due to the unique contents involving the appearance of school camera circle members, the presidents of student councils, and other members of the general public.

In 1977, the camera designer team addressed the challenge based on the basic plan to minimize any increase in driving power and reduce the weight of light-shielding components. A focal-plane shutter with a vertical-travel blade (up-down movement) lighter in weight was adopted, and industrial-grade pure titanium "TP35" was selected for the material of the blade. In order to obtain a lightweight and highly rigid blade, the lightening area and depth were determined based on careful consideration of the relationship between the blade flexural rigidity and lightening depth, processing accuracy of lightening, and frequency of occurrence of pinholes.

In addition to the development of the high-speed shutter, there was another technical challenge or enhancement of the metering performance. Around 1965, when we introduced the TTL metering system, we adopted the averaged brightness measuring system, which was eventually replaced by the center-weighted exposure measurement in 1967 because correct exposure could be achieved even if the subject and the background have different levels of brightness.

Nevertheless, if the brightness of the subject is very different from that of the background, such as in the case of backlighting, exposure compensation is necessary in some cases to ensure correct exposure. Automatic control of the exposure compensation was the other technical challenge.

We started taking on the challenge in 1977, and were successful in developing the so-called AMP (automatic multi-pattern) metering system which automatically provides correct exposure with a greater accuracy by measuring exposures independently at 5 separate segments on a finder image, and processing the exposure measurements with a microcomputer. In September 1983, we released Nikon FA which incorporated the world's first AMP metering system.

In the (5-segments) multi-pattern metering for Nikon FA, exposure measurements obtained by 5 light sensors are subjected to elimination of higher and lower brightness values, and then the optimum exposure value is calculated by a 4-bit microcomputer. During the process, pattern analysis is carried out based on the maximum brightness value, difference in brightness, the number of eliminated brightness values, and the information about individual positions and where they belong, either the dark side or the light side, to select any one of 4 exposure-determining methods for microcomputer processing. The processing program was selected through the data processing of over 10,000 actual shooting data by a large mainframe computer. This metering system is highly regarded for meeting the photographic purposes of professional photographers.

The Nikon FA came equipped with the multi-pattern metering system, 1/4,000 sec. high-speed shutter, and Nikon's first shutter speed-priority automatic exposure control mode.

In addition, the high-speed automatic mode selection was also incorporated to prevent possible camera-shake during the mounting of telephoto lenses with a focal length of 135 mm or more, which made this model a new and powerful SLR camera to answer a variety of needs from shutterbugs to professionals.

In May 1982, Nikon FG (with AI 50 mm f/1.8S, at a suggested retail price of 81,000 yen) was released incorporating the program AE with the instant stop-down exposure metering, manual exposure control, and TTL automatic flash exposure control for the Speedlight in the body of Nikon EM.

The FG featured the LED (light emission diode) display of shutter speed on the viewfinder.

In March 1984, the even lower-priced SLR camera Nikon FG-20 (with AI 50 mm f/1.8S, 68,000 yen), with auto and manual focusing, went on sale with the catchphrase "Users at all levels of expertise from beginners to professionals can enjoy taking pictures."

The FG-20 model (body alone at 48,000 yen) featured the program AE, TTL automatic flash exposure control and other functions eliminated from the FG (body alone at 61,000 yen), with the shutter speed display on the viewfinder based on the meter indication design similar to the EM (body alone at 40,000 yen).

Nikon F-301 (with AI Zoom Nikkor 35 - 70 mm f/3.3 - 4.5S, 107,000 yen) released in September 1985 was Nikon's first built-in motor drive AE SLR camera featuring automatic winding and continuous shooting (2.5 frames/sec.).

This model was the first among Nikon's SLR cameras to adopt the easy-load feature (simplified film loading), and it had a good reputation for its ease of operation comparable to compact cameras and thus helped increase the sales in the SLR camera market that at the time was in the doldrums.

In the area of interchangeable lenses, zoom lenses became prevalent from around 1975, and the ratio of zoom lenses to the total production of interchangeable lenses for 35 mm format cameras exceeded 50% in 1982 and reached 79.7% in 1985, from 19.8% in 1975 (based on the data by the Japan Camera Industry Association, JCIA).

Also, for all-weather amphibious cameras (all-weather cameras), we incorporated electronics into the NIKONOS IV-A released in July 1980 and implemented the aperture-priority automatic exposure control.

In April 1984, NIKONOS-V was released with two exposure control systems, aperture-priority automatic and manual, and also the TTL automatic flash exposure control. When coupled with the specifically designed Speedlight, NIKONOS-V made it possible to take pictures in water even at a distance as short as 30 cm using the TTL automatic flash exposure control. The NIKONOS-V soon became the flagship underwater camera for eliminating the difficulties of underwater photography to a reasonable extent.

Discontinuance of sales of NIKONOS-V was announced in 2001.

In accordance with the objectives, the engineering team took on the challenge of developing the AF mechanism and in April 1983, the Nikon F3AF was released. This was an AF camera based on the body of Nikon F3, containing a signal contact in the body for signal transmission and power supply through the body between the eye-level type AF finder DX-1 (with 1.5V R03 battery x 2) and the driving motor built-in AF lens.

The Nikon F3AF enabled the quick response to focusing by instant focus detection through real-time information processing by the analog circuit, using an SPD (Silicon Photo Diode) array as the sensing element.

For the AF lens, two models were developed, the AI AF Nikkor 80 mm f/2.8S and AI AF Nikkor 200 mm f/3.5 IF-ED. Both lenses contained the coreless micromotor-based operating unit on the periphery of the lens barrel and achieved the operating speeds of 0.6 sec. from infinity to 1 m for the 80 mm lens, and 1.7 sec. from infinity to 2 m for the 200 mm lens, taking advantage of the IF (Internal Focusing).

For a lens having a longer focal length, the large and heavy lens has to be moved in order to bring a subject into focus based on the all-element focusing method. Our IF methodology contributed to make the focusing operation light and smooth and improved the lens holding balance by moving a limited number of elements in the lens system.

Under the circumstances, we hurried to implement the body-powered AF SLR camera and successfully released the body-powered automatic focusing camera Nikon F-501 (body alone at 89,000 yen) in April 1986, by inheriting the F mount.

This AF camera incorporated the distance-measuring element based on the previously developed TTL phase difference detecting method, and thus implemented highly accurate, faster and reliable focusing by means of the two AF modes, single and continuous, and by manual focusing, with the focus aid (FA) showing the correct focusing by indication in the viewfinder in the case of any AF Nikkor lens or a lens with an f-number of f/4.5 or smaller.

June 1987, the body-powered AF SLR camera Nikon F-401 (body alone at 64,000 yen), developed as a lower-priced model to deal with the yen appreciation, went on sale.

F-401 was the world's first AF SLR camera with the TTL automatic flash exposure control Speedlight, and it was cost (price) effective with the single AF servo (AF-priority allowing the shutter to be pressed when the subject comes into focus) and 4 exposure modes.

In April 1986, when Nikon F-501 was released, the AI AF Nikkor 50 mm f/1.8S, AI AF35 - 70 mm f/3.3 - 4.5S and 3X telephoto zoom AI AF 70 - 210 mm f/4S went on sale and in July AI AF 35 - 105 mm f/3.5 - f/4.5S was placed on the market.
Additional models were later introduced, and in March 1988 the AI AF Nikkor lens series reached a total of 20 models.

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