Nikon L35AD2 / One Touch Buyer's Guide: the Pikaichi family and which one to buy

Ask a film shooter to name a compact with a genuinely good lens and the Nikon will come up fast. Nikon called it the Pikaichi in Japan — roughly "top-notch" — and sold it as the One Touch in North America. It was Nikon's first autofocus compact, and unlike most cameras in this class it was given a lens that a Nikkor designer took seriously.

There is one thing about this family that buyers get wrong more often than anything else, and it costs money: the lens is not the same on every model. This guide explains what changed, which version suits you, and what to check before you buy.

The thing most buyers miss

The lens people rave about belongs to the 1983 original, the L35AF (and its date-back twin, the L35AD). Its 35mm f/2.8 is a five-element, four-group Sonnar-derived design by Koichi Wakamiya. Nikon's own account of the design is blunt about the intent: most compacts of the day used a simpler Tessar layout, and Wakamiya chose the Sonnar form specifically to get a fast aperture and a compact barrel at the same time, while correcting the close-range aberrations that usually spoil such designs. The lens is marked "Nikon Lens" rather than "Nikkor", but the engineering behind it is not consumer-grade.

The 1985 L35AF2 and L35AD2 — the "New Pikaichi", sold as the One Touch — are a different camera under the skin. The 35mm f/2.8 was redesigned to four elements in three groups, the simpler layout the original had deliberately avoided. In exchange, Nikon made it far easier to live with: DX coding, closer focusing, a built-in lens cover and an automatic pop-up flash.

That is the trade in one sentence. The first camera has the more ambitious lens; the second is the better tool. Neither is the wrong answer, but paying an "it has the famous Sonnar lens" price for an AD2 is a mistake, and it happens all the time.

The family at a glance

	L35AF / L35AD Pikaichi	L35AF2 / L35AD2 New Pikaichi / One Touch
Released	March 1983 (AD: September 1983)	1985
Lens	35mm f/2.8, 5 elements in 4 groups (Sonnar type)	35mm f/2.8, 4 elements in 3 groups
Autofocus	Active infrared, 0.8 m to infinity	Active infrared, 0.7 m to infinity
Film speed	Set by hand. ISO 50–400 (early) or 50–1000 (later)	DX coded, ISO 50–1600 (non-DX film defaults to ISO 100)
Lens cover	Separate cap	Built in — nothing to lose
Filter thread	46 mm	—
Flash	Built in, GN 10 (ISO 100)	Automatic pop-up, GN 10 (ISO 100)
Batteries	2 × AA	2 × AA (plus CR2032 for the date back)
Size / weight	—	126 × 77 × 54 mm, about 320–330 g
Date version	L35AD	L35AD2 (Quartz Date)

A later L35AF3 / L35AD3 followed. Nikon also made two variants worth knowing by name so you can avoid them if the lens is what you are after: the waterproof L35AW AF (Action Touch) and the twin-lens L35TW AF (Tele Touch), both of which use different optics.

Why shoot one today

35mm, not 38 or 40. This sounds like a detail and is not. A 35mm lens takes in noticeably more than the 38mm of a Canon Autoboy or the 40mm of most rivals, which is the difference between stepping back and not being able to. For street photography, interiors and environmental portraits — people with their surroundings still in the frame — this is the more useful focal length, and it is the main practical reason to choose a Nikon over a Canon of the same era.

f/2.8 is as fast as this class gets. Very few autofocus compacts of the period open wider. It is sharp in the centre from wide open, and it holds up against the light better than most.

It runs on AA batteries. Two of them, from any shop in any country. No obsolete mercury cells, no expensive lithium. The date back on the AD2 uses a CR2032, but the camera itself does not need it.

On the AD2, there is nothing to lose and nothing to set. The lens cover is built into the body, so there is no cap to leave on a café table, and DX coding means the film tells the camera its speed. If you want a camera you can hand to somebody else, this is it.

It is not a collector-priced camera. Next to a Contax T2 or an Olympus mju II, the Nikon sits in a different bracket — which makes it one of the few compacts with a serious lens that you can buy to actually use rather than to keep on a shelf.

Know before you shoot

The honest criticisms, from people who have put film through these cameras:

• The corners are soft wide open, and there is visible coma — points of light grow a faint glow. Stopped down in daylight it tightens up. Some shooters buy the camera for this rendering; if you want corner-to-corner clinical sharpness, this is not that camera.
• It flares if you point it at the sun. Better controlled than most compacts of the era, but not immune.
• Autofocus is zone-based and centre-weighted. It is reliable on ordinary subjects and less so on small objects, thin subjects and off-centre faces. Use the focus lock rather than trusting it.
• The flash recycles slowly and the auto flash will fire when it decides to. Learn how to hold it down before the first evening you need to.
• Batteries drain in storage. If the camera has sat for months, put fresh cells in before assuming anything is broken.
• The body feels like 1985 plastic, because it is. There is a metal chassis underneath, but the shell does not flatter it.
• On date versions, the quartz calendar has run out — reviewers report it ending in 2019. The camera works perfectly; the date imprint no longer gives you a useful year.

How to shoot it well

1. Use the focus lock. Half-press on your subject, watch the distance indication in the viewfinder, recompose, then press. The finder shows you what the camera chose before you commit — a real advantage over some rivals of the era.
2. Respect 0.7 m (0.8 m on the 1983 camera). Closer than that and the camera cannot focus, and the viewfinder does not correct for parallax.
3. Know the flash override. Push the flash down to kill it. With ISO 400 film and an f/2.8 lens you can shoot indoors without it far more often than the camera assumes.
4. Watch the DX code. On the AD2, film without a DX code is exposed at ISO 100 whatever is actually loaded. On the 1983 camera you set the speed by hand, so check the dial.
5. Carry spare AAs. Cheap insurance, and the single most common reason one of these "stops working" on a trip.

Where it sits among its rivals

The Canon AF35M is the direct competitor from the same moment, and the honest comparison is that the Canon has the better flash and metering while the Nikon has the better lens and the wider, more useful 35mm view. We cover the Canon in its own Autoboy guide. The Olympus mju II is smaller and costs several times as much. The Contax T2 is in another price bracket entirely. Against all of them the Nikon's argument is the same: a lens Nikon took seriously, in a camera you can still afford to drop.

What to check before you buy

These are forty-year-old cameras and most have been in a drawer. Here is what we check on every one that reaches our workshop, and what to ask any seller:

1. Power. Old AA cells left inside are what kill these: they leak and the contacts corrode. The symptom is a camera that will not switch on, or that dies when you press the shutter. Ask whether it powers up reliably on fresh batteries.
2. Autofocus. The distance indication in the viewfinder should change between a near and a far subject, and the small AF windows on the front must be clean — that is how the camera sees.
3. Flash. It should pop up and the ready lamp should light. A flash that never charges means a failed capacitor, which is a repair rather than a clean.
4. The lens cover. On the AD2 the cover is part of the camera. It should open and close cleanly; a sticking cover is a common fault and an annoying one.
5. Shutter and film transport. Ask whether the seller has run an actual test roll. Winding and rewinding are the checks most often skipped, because doing them properly costs a roll of film and an hour.
6. The lens. Ask for dust, fungus, haze and cleaning marks to be reported separately, not as "clean" or "good condition". In our experience light dust and slight fungus almost never appear in photographs, and slight haze usually shows only when shooting into the light. Heavy haze or fungus is a different matter, and we grade it as such.
7. Light seals. The foam around the back door turns sticky with age and leaks light onto the edge of your frames. We replace deteriorated seals before a camera is listed.
8. Which model it actually is. Given the lens change, make sure the listing says AF/AD or AF2/AD2 and that the photographs agree with it.

How we grade and test

Every Pikaichi we list has been through the checks above. We run a test roll to confirm winding and rewinding, replace light seals that have deteriorated, and report each function on the product page as Works properly or Not working, with dust, fungus, haze and cleaning marks reported separately. The cosmetic grade follows our six-step scale from TOP MINT to As Is, and anything we find goes in the remarks. The full explanation is on our Grading & Inspection page.

Tested or "as is"?

Untested "as is" cameras are always cheaper, and for a competent repairer they can be a good buy. For everyone else the arithmetic rarely works: a failed flash capacitor, a sticking lens cover or a corroded battery compartment usually costs more to put right than the difference in price. And because the two generations do not carry the same lens, the more important question is not what a camera costs but which one you are being offered — check the name on the top plate and the ring around the lens before anything else.

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