㈱ニコン 本社

現在建設中の新社屋は近隣住民のことなど一切考えず工事を始め揺れや騒音で迷惑をかけまくりクレームには一切応じない 日本政府のようなとてもひどい会社体制です

受付向かって右側の奥は、ニコンミュージアムです。無料でニコンの魅力、カメラの世界を楽しめます。

On a recent trip to Tokyo, I went to see the Nikon museum in Shinagawa. There are two subway stations about a five minute walk from the museum that is located in Nikon's head office.

The museum is small but it offers a lot of information about the early history of Nikon and its ongoing development. There is a huge collection of cameras and lenses on display and lots of interactive exhibits (in Japanese and English). One display looked at a series of prototype lenses and photographs taken using them with a Z7. One remarkable aspect of this display is that a lot of prototype lenses get destroyed so it was good to see these photos.

In one of the displays, lenses were divided up into super wide angle, wide angle, medium, telephoto, and super telephoto. There were quite a few prototypes on display that never made it into production. Some of the super wide angle lenses were the size of a dinner plate. Also on display was an exhibit about Nikon bringing over eight engineers from Germany in the early days to learn about optics. One of the engineers stayed on as the head of the optics division until 1928. They had several of those first lenses on display.

There were several films to see, with subtitles. One of the films was about the R&D that went into the cameras used in the arctic by Naomi Uemara. Nikon built a titanium body camera with a host of mods to make the camera work in the harsh conditions, even going so far as to build a test lab capable of temperatures of -50 degrees C. Before using Nikons, Uemara had had his camera literally fall apart soon after starting his trip using a dog sled. He was surprised to see the journalists all using cameras in the cold weather when he was met at the end of his trip and he asked them what they were using (Nikons as it turns out). He then decided to approach Nikon.

All in all, it is a fascinating collection. Not a place to go to if you are afflicted with Gear Acquisition Syndrome but fortunately, everything is firmly fixed in place or is behind heavy glass. You can try out the longest telephoto prime lenses that are attached to cameras and on tripods and be amazed by how quickly and accurately they can focus.

I spent about three hours here. The admission is free and they offer an english-language audio guide for 300 Yen. In addition to cameras and lenses, there are also displays on Nikon's semiconductor equipment.