The Nikon S3 is a professional-level, interchangeable lens, 35 mm film, rangefinder camera introduced in 1958. It was manufactured by the Japanese optics company Nippon Kogaku K. K. (Nikon Corporation since 1988).
The S3 is mechanically similar to the Nikon SP except for a simplified viewfinder system. The viewfinder does not compensate for parallax error and the framelines are fixed (etched).
In 1958, the camera with 50mm lens sold for 86000 Yen ($239), .
The S3M, derived from the original S3 full-frame camera, was custom modified in a very small production run as a half-frame model using a 18x24mm frame. This gave double the number of exposures per roll. It was produced from 1960âÂÂ61.
In 2000, Nikon introduced an updated, hand-assembled S3 model to celebrate the new millennium, the S3 2000. It was quite a production to produce S3s again, as all the original dies were long gone. The new Nikkor 50mm 1.4 lens for the new S3 is noticeably larger than original 50mm 1.4 lenses.