It was June, 1959 when the historic SLR camera, Nikon F made its debut on the market.
100% finder magnification that gave the accurate field of view through the viewfinder, and also the durability of the shutter mechanism that could be released over a hundred thousand times - these things attracted a large number of professionals including press photographers. Beside, that wide varieties of accessories were provided at the same time when it was introduced spurred its popularity worldwide.

Nikon photomic series has the viewfinder with built-in meter that couples with the shutter speed and the aperture.
In 1962, photomic was introduced, that has the built-in celenium meter of external metering system. After that came photomic T in 1965. The external metering system was improved to TTL metering on photmic T. Then in 1967, photomic TN. The center-weighted light reading system is adopted on it, while the avaraged overall light reading system is on photomic and photomic T. And also, lens changing operation of photomic TN became easier than that of photomic and photomic T that rotating the aperture ring back and forth conveys the information of the maximum aperture to the viewfinder. After all, Nikon photmic FTN turned out to be the long selling model.

In addition, the serial number of Nikon F lets you know around when the camera was manufactured.
(If the serial number on the camera is *6785085, it was manufactured around 1967.)
#640**** - 660**** '59 - '65 #661**** - 669**** These number were used for Nikon S
#670**** - 706**** '66 - '69 #707**** - 745**** '70 - '73
The serial number of New F begins around #730****.


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