Nikkor Ai 25-50mm f4.

A new addition to my manual focus Nikkor collection: The Nikkor Ai 25-50 f4 zoom lens.

Click lens image below for Nikon site.

As of May 2017: Nikon seems to have taken down their Nikkor 1001 Nights Tales – this is very sad because it had so much interesting information about the design and production of many lenses. I hope this is just for the duration of their 100th anniversary; it would be very short-sighted of them if it is gone for good.
Update 20 Aug 2017: it looks like all the tales ending with No.60 are back.

One of Nikon’s early professional zoom lenses, which should complement my ‘F’ camera quite nicely. This lens was manufactured in 1981 and by the end of that year was changed by Nikon to an Ai-s version. For some reason the second-hand price for the Ai-s version is more expensive than the Ai, there is no real reason for buying the later version unless one owns a Nikon FA camera, even then it is questionable as the internal construction of both lenses is exactly the same. All Ai / Ai-s lenses fit on every Nikon SLR camera, be they manual or AF with one caveat; some of the cheaper AF cameras will not meter with manual focus lenses (check your instruction manual). The only warning I would add here is ‘non Ai lenses’ made for the Nikon ‘F’ will damage most other cameras, with the exception of the F3, F4 & the Df !

See this link for camera compatibility: https://www.nikonians.org/reviews/nikon-slr-camera-and-lens-compatibility

This lens has some very nice qualities;  although long discontinued, it is without colour aberrations and images are sharp from corner-to-corner, light fall-off being very low even wide open. It will attain peak sharpness at f/5.6 and holds well even when stopped down to f/16 which delivers very good results.
Looking forward to cooler weather  😎 so that I can get out & about with it fitted on both film and digital cameras.