Nikon M-35
The M-35 is a 35mm film camera body made by Nikon in the 1970s-80s for attachment to a microscope, part of a series of outfits named Microflex. It is essentially only a film holder (Nikon information refers to it as a 'dark box'); there is no shutter; the adapter via which it attaches to the microscope contains that. There is no viewfinder either; the user views the image via a side eyepiece of the adapter. The M-35 body has a dark-slide, film advance lever and rewind crank. It is strikingly similar to X-ray camera bodies (for example the Mamiya X-30). In examples seen in online auctions, the mount appears to be a simple screw-thread (i.e. none of the Nikon lens-mounts)
There is a second model of the camera, the M-35 S, which has a knob on the top plate to select between full-frame and half-frame.
The adapter for these cameras is any of several models, each comprising a vertical tube with a leaf shutter, and a viewing eyepiece on a side-arm, with a beam-splitting prism that directs part of the image light to the VF. The PFM is the basic model; it has shutter speeds from 1 to 1/250 second, plus 'B' and 'T', and is completely manual. The EFM has a light-meter, and gives shutter times up to 32 seconds. The AFM has auto-exposure between 120 seconds and 1/100 second. There is also a CFM model adapted for a cine camera.[1]
Nikon has made medium and even large-format equivalents of this instrument, and later generations of the 35mm device have been made with motorised film-holders, and finally specialised digital camera attachments.
Notes
- ↑ Nikon M-35 S and PFM at Photography in Malaysia. The notes state that Nikon made microscope adapters for the Nikon rangefinder cameras as early as 1954.
