W-Nikkor-C 2.8cm F3.5 in M39 Questions

[David Murphy]

This is another lens I'm puzzling over. How rare is this actually? My Nikon reference book ("The Complete Nikon System" by Peter Braczko) says only that this is very hard to find in M39 without giving numbers.

I acquired a pretty nice looking one and I need to decide whether to keep this for shooting or relegate it to collectors. Some of the pics I've seen posted here taken with the Nikon RF version are pretty impressive.

Any comments or opinions on this lens are welcome.

 

[VinceC]

I see these periodically on EBay, so they're not super rare. There were about 10,000 total of these lenses made, in Nikon and LTM mount. So it's not like they're easy to find in either Nikon or LTM mount. As Brian says, use the lens. If you don't use it, the lubricant will stiffen and the aperture blades will get oily sometime in the next hundred years. If you want to preserve it for future generations, the best way to do that is to use it.