The Nikkor brand was introduced in 1932, a Westernised rendering of an earlier version Nikkō (日光), an abbreviation of the company's original full name Nippon Kōgaku ("Japan Optics"; 日本光学工業株式会社).

In 1933, Nikon marketed its first camera lens under the Nikkor brand name, the "Aero-NIKKOR," for aerial photography.

Notable Nikkor branded optics have included: Nikon introduced the Z-mount in 2018 for their system of digital full-frame and APS-C (DX) mirrorless cameras.

Prior to approximately 1976, most Nikon lenses had a suffix appended directly after the "Nikkor" name that was used to denote the number of optical elements in the lens design.

true Apochromat series, designed for the printing industry, optimized for 1:1 reproduction.

Lens Construction 4 elements in 4 groups / Double Gauss Type Lenses.

The wide angle version Apo-Nikkor lens was developed for small-scale platemaking cameras.

(Per Nikon, Inc. Technical and Service Support (800-645-6689), manufacture and sale of all enlarging lenses has been discontinued.)

The Apo-EL-Nikkor series of lenses are true Apochromat photo enlarging lenses with chromatic aberration corrected not only for the entire visible range of the spectrum, but also in near ultraviolet and near infrared ranges (380-700 nm).

Transmission from 350 to 700 nm, no focus shift between visible and actinic light used for photoresists.

Thoroughly eliminate various aberrations in the reference scale, with a high color fidelity and resolution.