Weekly newsletter

The Nikon world, carefully selected

Photography first.
Everything Nikon.

News, photographs, useful discoveries, history and the occasional strong opinion, gathered from around the world by Steve Simon.

Saturday, October 24, 2026 Independent. Curious. Unofficial.

The News Desk

Short reads from across the Nikon world

Nikon Picture of the Day

One photograph.
Every day.

A daily winner or finalist from a Nikon-sponsored or Nikon-run photography competition, always with the photographer's name and a direct path back to the original presentation.

A young mountain gorilla raises one foot and one hand in Mark Meth-Cohn's photograph High Five

2025 overall winner · Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards

High Five

Photograph by Mark Meth-Cohn

A young male gorilla, photographed while playing in Rwanda's Virunga Mountains. The moment also received the competition's Mammals Category Award.

See the original feature ↗

Latest from the Nikon world

Selected, not scraped

Every item earns its place and sends you to the original source.

Grand Prix photograph from the 74th Nikkor Photo Contest

From Japan

One photograph from 23,611 entries

Mayumi Takeuchi's photograph received the Grand Prix in the 74th Nikkor Photo Contest.

The contest welcomes professionals and amateurs, regardless of the equipment they use. The photograph comes first.

Interior of the Nikon Museum at Nikon's new headquarters in Tokyo

Nikon Museum

Secrets Behind the Viewfinder

The Nikon Museum's new exhibition explores how the viewfinder has shaped what photographers see. It opened October 22 in Tokyo.

The Collector's Desk

Beautiful, odd
and occasionally priceless

Nikon history is not only in museums. It lives on shelves, in camera bags and in the strange corners of the auction world. This is where we look at the objects, the stories behind them and what people are willing to pay.

Nikon's 100th Anniversary collection

Anniversary editions

When Nikon turned 100, it opened the vault

Special cameras, lenses, binoculars, a crystal Nikon Model I, pins and straps. Some were working tools dressed for the occasion. Others were made simply because collectors would love them.

Ten framed Nikon 100th Anniversary limited-edition camera posters

Numbered edition

Ten cameras, ten limited-edition posters

From the Nikon I to the D1, each design was printed on archival fine-art paper, hand-numbered and limited to 100 first-edition prints. Finding an entire matching set is another matter.

Nikon 100th Anniversary miniature Nikon F camera

Small wonder

The miniature Nikon F

A replica of the camera that helped define professional 35mm photography, reduced to something that fits in the palm of your hand.

Gold-plated Nikon FM with matching lens

Rare Nikon

The gold Nikon FM

Made for Nikon's 60th anniversary in 1977 and never offered as an ordinary production camera. The auction house says approximately 300 were made.

Rare Nikkor-O Auto 58mm f/1 lens

Sold

A Nikon lens sells for €187,500

The experimental Nikkor-O Auto 58mm f/1 reached that price at auction in 2022. Sometimes the market tells us just how rare rare really is.

From Steve's collection

I have gathered plenty of Nikon objects over the years. Some are valuable, some are wonderfully impractical and some simply make me smile. This will become a place to photograph them, tell their stories and occasionally wonder why I needed one in the first place.

Your Nikon story

What have you kept, and why?

Send one photograph of a Nikon collectible, tell us what it is and share the short story behind it. It does not have to be rare or expensive. It only has to matter to you.

Reader submissions will open with the public edition.

Original this week

Back-Button Autofocus,
Reconsidered

The move from DSLRs to current Z cameras has changed the autofocus conversation. With focus coverage across roughly ninety percent of the frame, broad Wide-area AF boxes and remarkably quick face and eye detection, separating autofocus from the shutter button is no longer an automatic recommendation for everyone.

The larger question remains: which setup leaves you freer to watch the picture?

What the camera can focus on has changed.
What deserves our attention has not.

From the Archive

Still worth discovering

Not everything valuable happened this week.

1966

THE EYE
OF SCIENCE

Watch

Inside Nikon in 1966

A thirty-minute Japanese documentary follows optical glass, hand assembly, shutter testing and the people behind the cameras.

Anyone who has relied on a camera will recognize the hope behind all that testing: that when the moment arrives, the mechanism works and gets out of the way.

About All Things Nikon

An independent publication edited by Steve Simon.

All Things Nikon is for photographers who care about both photographs and the tools used to make them. It covers current cameras, older equipment, technique, history, collectibles, photographers and Nikon as a company, with enthusiasm but without pretending everything Nikon does is beyond criticism.

All Things Nikon is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by Nikon Corporation.

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Use and attribution

Independent and unofficial.

All Things Nikon is an independent editorial publication and is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by Nikon Corporation. Nikon, NIKKOR and related names and marks belong to their respective owners. Site text and original material may not be republished without permission.

Contact

A note is always welcome.

Questions, ideas and Nikon discoveries are welcome at hello@allthingsnikon.com.

Original · Learn Nikon

Back-Button Autofocus, Reconsidered

Autofocus has changed. The old advice deserves another look.

Back-button autofocus became popular for good reason. Moving focus activation away from the shutter button gave photographers more control, particularly when subjects moved unpredictably or when focus needed to be locked while the frame changed.

But cameras have changed. With the current Nikon Z system, focus points extend across roughly ninety percent of the frame. Wide-area AF can cast a generous net around a moving subject, while face and eye detection often moves from subject to face to eye almost instantly.

That technology is extraordinary. It means fewer photographs lost because the camera focused in the wrong place. But sharpness is only one part of the equation. It does not decide what to photograph, where to stand, what to include or when to press the shutter.

This is the opening. The complete essay will appear in the launch library.