Nikon I, M and S

A demand to fit Nikkors to the reporters' Leicas were immediately met at the factory in Tokyo, and soon the word spread about these Japanese lenses which were just as good as, or possibly better than their German counterparts.

The designers chose the 24 × 32 mm frame size pioneered by the Minolta 35 launched a year earlier by Chiyoda Kogaku, known as the Nippon format, which yielded more frames per length of film, and matched more closely the common paper sizes.

However, the camera never caught on, because the US administration in Tokyo did not permit export to the US due to the non standard format, incompatible with the Kodak slide mounts.

Nippon Kogaku had settled for an intermediate frame format of 24 × 34 mm,[1] hoping to find acceptance on the export market.

The latter three were built on the same frame with different features; the Nikon F SLR shares the basic body configuration of the latest rangefinder models.