niKonos V /// 1984

it’s eAsy to be daunted by the challenges of underwater photography, especially when it comes to the equipment because the cheap is almost always nasty and the expensive is… well, er… expensive, but complex too. Back in the early 1950s the famed French ocean explorer and conservationist Jacques-Yves Cousteau came up with a more convenient design for a 35mm underwater camera which he called the Calypso-phot (Calypso was the name of his exploration vessel). Nikon acquired the design in 1963 – renaming it Nikonos – and set about refining it through five subsequent generations which culminated in the V, which launched in 1984.

While the early Nikonos models are interesting historically – being very close to Cousteau’s original concept – the V is the camera to have if you actually still want to use it. All the refinements of two decades mean that the V is as easy to use underwater as any landlubber camera, and you can take it down to 50 metres. It’s compact compared to anything in a housing – and a whole lot easier to use – and offers the convenience of built-in metering with aperture-priority exposure control and, perhaps even more importantly, TTL auto flash control with balanced fill-in flash when using certain Nikon underwater flashes. Manual exposure control is available too, which the previous IV-A model didn’t have. Focusing takes practice as it’s manual with no assists, but it’s easy to adjust thanks to the twin-knob design of the lenses (the second is for setting apertures). Lenses are interchangeable, although the choice is mostly limited to wide-angle primes. These are either UW or W types, the former designed optically exclusively for underwater use (and including a 15mm ultra-wide) while the latter can also be used on land (and include an 80mm short telephoto). The distinctive orange padding makes the Nikonos V a talking point (although the khaki green version is much rarer), and while this camera is definitely a film classic in the making, it’s still very affordable… and huge fun to shoot with. For all you trivia buffs, the prototype Calypso-Nikonos is another camera with James Bond credentials, appearing with Sean Connery in Thunderball.