The Nikon (or any manufacturer for that matter) have their special ways to name their lenses & lens hoods & accessories. Sometimes, for a beginner, the lens name & specification could be confusing since they come with a lot of acronyms.

Each lens has the entire lens specification printed on the lens barrel. They could tell you a lot of what the lens could do & how it fits into your requirements. This article explains how Nikon lenses are names & what each of the numbers or alphabets on the lens & the lens hood name mean for you.

Nikon Lens & Lens Hood Nomenclature

Nikon F- Mount – the way the Nikon lenses are fixed to the Nikon bodies, is called the Nikon F Mount. Any non-Nikon lenses have to be a similar F-Mount system to work with a Nikon camera body.

Nikon A Mount – the older Nikon bayonet mount lens type of lenses used on Pre-AI lenses. Nikon only makes F mount bodies now.

Pre-AI Lenses – Nikon Pre-AI lenses were made for the very early Nikon bodies till about 1980. These lenses do not work on any of the modern Nikon bodies.

AI Lenses – Nikon started making AI lenses from 1977. AI stands for Aperture Indexing. All AI lenses will work on any modern Nikon camera body but since AI lenses have different metering techniques, metering may not work on all Nikon camera bodies.

Versions of AI – AI-E (1979), AI-S (1982) and AI-P (1988). They are essentially the same to a current camera body as AI lenses, with the exception of AI-P, as it is has a CPU built into it for auto-focus bodies to transfer lens information to the camera.

Nikon AF Lenses – AF are auto-focus lenses & were released in 1986.

Nikon AF-D Lenses – released in 1992, adds distance information to the data supplied by the lens to the camera.

Nikon AF-I Lenses – the I stands for Integrated. These Nikon lenses have a coreless focus motor & was released in 1992. Most of the AF-I lenses had an aperture ring on the lens barrel & were thus the D Type lens.

AF-S Lenses – these are with Nikon Silent Wave Coreless Motors for auto focusing. These AF-S lenses were released by Nikon in 1996.

Nikon G Lenses – the G, stands for Gelded, is a mechanical modification in which the aperture ring is removed from the lens. The lens aperture can only be controlled from the camera body & hence the G type lenses can be used only on modern Nikon camera bodies.

Nikon ADR Lenses – ADR stands for Aperture Direct Readout. In these lens body combination, the aperture etched on the lens barrel can be seen through the camera viewfinder through the aperture readout on the view finder prism overhang.

Nikon IX Lenses – Nikon does not make them anymore. The IX lenses are for APS (Advanced Photo System) cameras & were meant for the Nikon Pronea series of cameras. These IX lenses do not work on 35 mm cameras.

Nikon ED Lenses – these are specialty lenses with an extra lens coating to minimize light loss. ED stands for Extra-low Dispersion of light.

Nikon ASP Lenses – the ASP indicates the type of lens construction, the Aspherical type lens elements, that further reduces lens errors & aberrations.

Nikon C Lens or NIC Lenses – C indicates Nikon’s proprietary lens coating, called Integrated Coating, to reduce lens flare, light loss & aberrations.

Nikon CRC Lenses – CRC stands for Closed Range Correction & implies lenses with construction that can focus at very close distance, much like the macro lenses.

Nikon DC Lenses – De-focus Control lenses are designed to change the degree of spherical aberration in the out-of-focus areas to provide for better bokeh.

Nikon DX Lenses – released in 2003, these digital camera specific lenses are designed to work on less than full frame sensors in Nikon DSLR cameras. These lenses are designed to eliminate light aberrations on the edges of the sensors by covering the smaller image circle of the digital camera bodies.

Nikon FX Lenses – released in 2007 the FX type of lenses indicate Nikon Lenses that work perfectly well on film cameras or 35mm full frame digital cameras.

Nikon IF Lenses – IF stands for Internal Focusing system, in which the outer barrel of the lens does not turn while the lens tries to focus itself.

Nikon N Lenses – this is not really a single lens type but N indicates the Nikon’s proprietary Nano coating, a special nano-crystal lens coating for reducing lens aberrations and light loss.

Nikon NIC Lenses – similar to the Nikon N terminology, NIC stands for Nikon Integrated Coating, a special lens treatment with a proprietary coating to reduce lens flare and aberrations.

Nikon SIC Lenses – Super Integrated Coating, a multi-layer flare reduction coating, usually applied to the more complex zoom lenses.

Nikon PC Lenses – PC stands for Perspective Control in which the front of the lens to be shifted relative to the rest of the lens to correct for perspective. All PC lenses are either AI or AI-P in type.

Nikon RF Lenses – RF indicates Rear Focusing lens & means that lens achieves focusing by moving the rear elements.

Nikon SWM Lenses – SWM stands for Silent Wave Motor & this is the motor in the lens used in AF-I and AF-S lenses.

Nikon UW Lenses – UW implies Under Water lenses & designed for the Nikonos under water camera systems.

Nikon VR & VR II Lenses – Vibration Reduction lenses that corrects for camera movement during exposure. VR function only works on post F5 cameras & the modern Nikon cameras after 2005.

Nikon Lens Hood Nomenclatures