used around the battlefields of Korea under almost every imaginable handicap— from the humid, dust-soaked summer months, to the unforgettably cold days of winter near the Changjin Reservoir. The cameras kept working perfectly, even after the film itself started breaking during winding—just from cold. Every photograph in This Is War! was taken with a Leica camera, but fitted with Nikkor lenses…made in occupied Japan, Prior to the outbreak of the Korean War, Horace Bristol, former Life and Fortune photographer now living in Tokyo, and I began experimenting with the whole new line of Nikkor lenses, made by the Nippon Optical Company, Tokyo, and discovered, to our utter amazement, that their three standard lenses for 35mm cameras were far superior, in our opinions, to any standard 35mm lenses available on the open market—British, American or German. Except for our wide-angle and extreme telephoto lenses over 135mm—where we thought the German products to be still superior, we sold every other lens in our outfits…and reequipped with only Nikkor lenses. The Nikkors that we found best were the 50mm, F1.5 (now superseded by a 50mm, F1.4 clickstop lens); the 85mm, F2; the 135mm, F3.5. The entire Nikkor line of lenses is made in Tokyo, from exclusively Japanese materials. From glass to gears their lenses and cameras are Japanese. The only thing in the Nippon Company product not made in Tokyo, of Japanese materials, is the spring in the focal plane shutter of the company's Nikon camera—it is Swedish because the manufacturers consider it superior to any spring steel yet made in Japan. As the Korean war progressed, and other magazine and newspaper photographers arrived in Tokyo, the reputation of the new lenses spread until, within a matter of only three months, there was scarcely a photographer working out of Japan who was not using Nikkors on his cameras. Among the most notable of these were Carl Mydans and Hank Walker, both of Life. They not only began using the lenses, but soon had discarded their original German cameras and were using only Nikons, Max Desfor, Associated Press's top news 174 l Ⅶ. Photo Data This is War!
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