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Bellows-Nikkor-P 105mm f/4
All huff and puff?
I thought it ironical, as I struggled to take a standard “pack shot” of the very unusual Nikon Bellows with its dedicated pre-set 105mm Nikkor lens for this article, that the specialised equipment I needed for the shot was the set-up being photographed! Whilst all working photographers have a number of different, and spare, cameras and lenses, the few who own one of these scarce items would not have another to hand. In fact this whole set-up is a photographic dinosaur... it could have dominated as a “conquer all” solution... but was gradually killed off as smaller and faster alternatives evolved.
Before I describe what the beast does - and why it was superseded - I’ll summarise what it is. The Bellows-Nikkor P 105 mm f/4 lens (“P” being the Roman letter for “Penta” indicating five elements) was launched in 1969 as a development of an earlier 135 mm Bellows-Nikkor. Both were designed for exclusive use with Nikon 35 mm SLR cameras fitted with a bellows focusing unit. This was necessary because the lens itself had no helical focusing mechanism so could only be brought into focus on the film plane by racking it in and out on a variable extension accessory. There are five basic ways of achieving this using...
a) Different fixed lengths of compatible extension rings or tubes.
b) A variable-length tube (a la 65-116 Olympus Telescopic Ext. Tube).
c) A variable-length screwed tube (a la Pentax Helicoid Ext. Tube).
d) Using combinations of close-up lenses on the primary lens, and
e) A variable-length flexible mechanism... namely, a bellows.
Nikon offered options a), d) and e) which, with different models, could be used in different combinations with many lenses from the Nikkor range for a variety of magnifications increasing to much greater than life-size. Apart from extension tube sets and supplementary close-up lenses, Nikon initially offered only conventional bellows units... but then came up with a flexible “bendy” bellows which emulated the basic movements of a traditional view camera.
This was quite a clever move because from the 1960s miniature 35 mm cameras were rapidly becoming dominant in professional usage despite offering limited features in the traditional sense. Admittedly, they were the be-all-and-end-all for news and sports photographers, and for most landscape, architectural, industrial, studio and scientific professions they offered much easier handling capabilities... but without the traditional image manipulation and correction capabilities found on view cameras for much of the previous century. But with one product, the PB-4 Bellows, Nikon launched the accessory that brought some traditional ways of working into the modern era... and with the big advantage of handling speed.
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