Nikon’s sole new offering in 1984 is fascinating not as an example of the camera builder’s art but as a statement of the direction in which camera development was going in the middle of the eighties. When, in the mid-seventies, Canon had introduced the plastic shelled, all electronic AE-1, they had effectively re-defined the mass market for 35mm SLR cameras. Over the next few years the market fragmented into three distinct areas. At the top, and offering the highest unit profit if you could stay the course, was the professional and advanced amateur market. This was basically sliced up by Canon and Nikon with Leica, Minolta, Olympus and Pentax sharing what few crumbs the big boys dropped