(; ; ) is a Japanese manufacturer of optical and precision equipment headquartered in Nishi-Ōi, Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its businesses include cameras and lenses, semiconductor and flat-panel-display lithography systems, microscopes and ophthalmic imaging systems, industrial measurement and inspection equipment, optical components, and metal additive-manufacturing systems.
Founded on July 25, 1917 as Nippon Kōgaku Kōgyō Kabushikigaisha (; "Japan Optical Industries Co., Ltd."), Nikon initially manufactured optical instruments and later became internationally known for its cameras and Nikkor lenses. It introduced Japan's first commercial LSI stepper in 1980 and changed its corporate name to Nikon Corporation in 1988. Among its notable product lines are the Nikon F-series of 35 mm film SLR cameras, the Nikon D-series of digital SLR cameras, the Nikon Z-series of mirrorless cameras, the Coolpix series of compact digital cameras, and the Nikonos series of underwater film cameras.
Since the 2010s, Nikon has expanded beyond its traditional imaging and precision-equipment businesses into healthcare, industrial technologies and digital manufacturing. It acquired British retinal-imaging company Optos in 2015, German metal additive-manufacturing company SLM Solutions in 2023, and American cinema-camera manufacturer Red Digital Cinema in 2024. For the fiscal year ended March 31, 2026, Nikon reported revenue of ¥677.2 billion, an operating loss of ¥112.4 billion and a loss attributable to owners of the parent of ¥86.1 billion, with the Digital Manufacturing business recording substantial impairment losses.
Nikon is a member of the Mitsubishi group of companies (keiretsu). Its main competitors in camera and lens manufacturing include Canon, Sony, Fujifilm, Panasonic, Pentax, and Olympus.
History The Nikon Corporation was established on 25 July 1917 when three leading optical manufacturers merged to form a comprehensive, fully integrated optical company known as Nippon Kōgaku Kōgyō K.K. Over the next sixty years, this growing company became a manufacturer of optical lenses (including those for the first Canon cameras) and equipment used in cameras, binoculars, microscopes and inspection equipment.
During World War II, the company expanded its military-optics production, manufacturing binoculars, lenses, bomb sights, and periscopes for the Japanese military.
Reception outside Japan After the war, Nippon Kōgaku reverted to producing its civilian product range in a single factory. In 1948, the first Nikon-branded camera was released, the Nikon I. Nikon lenses were popularised by the American photojournalist David Douglas Duncan.
Duncan was working in Tokyo when the Korean War began. Duncan had met a young Japanese photographer, Jun Miki, who introduced Duncan to Nikon lenses. From July 1950 to January 1951, Duncan covered the Korean War. Fitting Nikon optics (especially the NIKKOR-P.C 1:2 f=8,5 cm)In German: Peter Braczko, Nikon Faszination, Geschichte – Technik – Mythos von 1917 bis heute, Hückelhoven 1992, , S. 27ff und Tafel 2. to his Leica rangefinder cameras allowed him to produce high contrast negatives with very sharp resolution at the centre field.
Names and brands
Founded in 1917 as Nippon Kōgaku Kōgyō Kabushikigaisha ( "Japan Optical Industries Corporation"), the company was renamed Nikon Corporation, after its cameras, in 1988. The name Nikon, which dates from 1946, was originally intended only for its small-camera line, spelled as "Nikkon", with an addition of the "n" to the "Nikko" brand name. The similarity to the Carl Zeiss AG brand "ikon", would cause some early problems in Germany as Zeiss complained that Nikon violated its trademarked camera. From 1963 to 1968 the Nikon F in particular was therefore labeled 'Nikkor'. in the German market.
The Nikkor brand was introduced in 1932, a westernised rendering of an earlier version Nikkō (), an abbreviation of the company's original full name (Nikkō also means "sunlight" and is the name of a famous Japanese onsen town.). Nikkor is the Nikon brand name for its lenses.
Another early brand used on microscopes was Joico, an abbreviation of "Japan Optical Industries Co".
Expeed is the brand Nikon uses for its image processors. It is a system on a chip used as the image processor in all Nikon DSLRs and MILCs since 2007, along with being used in some digital compact cameras.
Rise of the Nikon F series
Nikon's rangefinder cameras, starting with the Nikon I in 1948, marked the entry of Nippon Kogaku K.K. into the photographic market, following its focus on optical instruments such as lenses and microscopes. These models, including the Nikon I, M, S, and subsequent series, utilized the S-Mount bayonet, inspired by the Contax RF system, and featured a compact design with a rangefinder viewfinder. They helped establish Nikon as a leading brand in professional photography until the shift to reflex cameras in the 1960s.
The Nikon SP and other 1950s and 1960s rangefinder cameras competed directly with models from Leica and Zeiss. However, the company quickly ceased developing its rangefinder line to focus its efforts on the Nikon F single-lens reflex line of cameras, which was successful upon its introduction in 1959.
For nearly 30 years, Nikon's F-series SLRs were the most widely used small-format cameras among professional photographers, as well as by some U.S. space programs, the first in 1971 on Apollo 15 (as a lighter and smaller alternative to the Hasselblad, used in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, 12 of which are still on the Moon) and later once in 1973 on the Skylab and later again on it in 1981.
Nikon popularized many features in professional SLR photography, such as the modular camera system with interchangeable lenses, viewfinders, motor drives, and data backs; integrated light metering and lens indexing; electronic strobe flashguns instead of expendable flashbulbs; electronic shutter control; evaluative multi-zone "matrix" metering; and built-in motorized film advance. However, as autofocus SLRs became available from Minolta and others in the mid-1980s, Nikon's line of manual-focus cameras began to seem out of date.
Despite introducing one of the first autofocus models, the slow and bulky F3AF, the company's determination to maintain lens compatibility with its F-mount prevented rapid advances in autofocus technology. Canon introduced a new type of lens-camera interface with its entirely electronic Canon EOS cameras and Canon EF lens mount in 1987.
The much faster lens performance permitted by Canon's electronic focusing and aperture control prompted many professional photographers (especially in sports and news) to switch to the Canon system through the 1990s.
Post-millennium film camera production Once Nikon introduced affordable consumer-level DSLRs such as the Nikon D70 in the mid-2000s, sales of its consumer and professional film cameras fell rapidly, following the general trend in the industry. In January 2006, Nikon announced it would stop making most of its film camera models and all of its large format lenses, and focus on digital models.
Nikon continued to offer the high-end Nikon F6 and the entry-level FM10 after the 2006 restructuring. Both models still appeared in Nikon's film-camera lineup in 2019.
Digital photography Digital single-lens reflex and point and shoot cameras
Nikon created some of the first digital SLRs (DSLRs) for NASA; the Nikon NASA F4 was used in the Space Shuttle since 1991. After a 1990s partnership with Kodak to produce digital SLR cameras based on existing Nikon film bodies, Nikon released the Nikon D1 SLR under its own name in 1999. Although it used an APS-C-size light sensor only 2/3 the size of a 35 mm film frame (later called a "DX sensor"), the D1 was among the first digital cameras to have sufficient image quality and a low enough price for some professionals (particularly photojournalists and sports photographers) to use it as a replacement for a film SLR. The company also has a Coolpix line which grew as consumer digital photography became increasingly prevalent through the early 2000s.
Through the mid-2000s, Nikon's line of professional and enthusiast DSLRs and lenses, including its backwards compatible AF-S lens line, remained in second place behind Canon in SLR camera sales, and Canon had several years' lead in producing professional DSLRs with light sensors as large as traditional 35 mm film frames. All Nikon DSLRs from 1999 to 2007, by contrast, used the smaller DX size sensor.
Then, 2005 management changes at Nikon led to new camera designs such as the full-frame Nikon D3 in late 2007, the Nikon D700 a few months later, and mid-range SLRs. Nikon regained much of its reputation among professional and amateur enthusiast photographers as a leading innovator in the field, especially because of the speed, ergonomics, and low-light performance of its latest models. The mid-range Nikon D90, introduced in 2008, was the first SLR camera to record video. Since the D90, video mode has been introduced to many more of the Nikon and non-Nikon DSLR cameras, including the Nikon D3S, Nikon D3100, Nikon D3200, Nikon D5100, and Nikon D7000.
In 2008, Nikon released a photograph and video editing suite called ViewNX to browse, edit, merge and share images and videos. Despite the market growth of mirrorless cameras, Nikon did not neglect its F-mount SLR cameras and continued to release some professional DSLRs, such as the D780 and the D6 in 2020.
Mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras
In reaction to the growing market for mirrorless cameras, Nikon released its first Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens Cameras and also a new lens mount in 2011. The lens mount was the Nikon 1, and the first bodies for it were the Nikon 1 J1 and the V1. The system was built around a 1-inch (CX format) image sensor with a 2.7× crop factor. In 2018, Nikon officially discontinued the 1 series, after three years without a new camera body, the last one being the Nikon 1 J5.
Immediately following the demise of the Nikon 1, Nikon introduced a new mirrorless system in its lineup: the Nikon Z system. The first cameras in the series were the Z6 and the Z7, both with a Full Frame (FX) sensor format, In-Body Image Stabilization and a built-in electronic viewfinder. The Z-mount is not only for FX cameras though, as in 2019 Nikon introduced the Z50 with a DX format sensor, without IBIS but with the compatibility to every Z-mount lens.
In 2020, Nikon updated both the Z6 and the Z7 with the Z6II and the Z7II. The improvements over the original models include the use of dual EXPEED 6 processors, an added card slot, improved video and AF features, higher burst rates, battery grip support, and USB-C power delivery.
In 2021, Nikon released two mirrorless cameras, the Zfc and the Z9. The Nikon Zfc is the second Z-series APS-C (DX) mirrorless camera in the lineup, designed to evoke the company's famous FM2 SLR from the 1980s. It offers manual controls, including dedicated dials for shutter speed, exposure compensation and ISO. The Z9 became Nikon's flagship mirrorless camera, succeeding the D6 at the top of the company's professional camera range. It uses a 45.7-megapixel Full Frame (FX) format stacked CMOS sensor and omits a mechanical shutter. Its specifications include 20 fps continuous shooting at full resolution in raw format, 30 fps continuous shooting for full-resolution JPEGs, 4K 120p video and 8K internal recording.
Mirrorless fixed-lens cameras, the cancelled release of DL series