Welcome to the Newschoolers forums! You may read the forums as a guest, however you must be a registered member to post. Register to become a member today!
Long story short:
I have money to buy a DSLR with, I already have 2 Nikon AF lenses from the late 80's.(50mm nikkor, and 70-210 sigma)
I'm assuming the lenses will work with the current AF-s mount DSLRs.
I'm primarily doing photography (outdoors) and a little bit of videography.
I like the D3200, my budget is about 650 for the body.
Any thoughts?
+k for help.
Mkvackayto use those older lenses, you will need a pro(or prosumer) dslr to run the auto-focus. older lenses run the autofocus through the lens itself. d80/d90/d7000 will autofocus those lenses
How hard would they be to hand focus?
I manual focus on my 35mm, but that has visual focusing things in the penta prism.
DIPED_IN_SAUCEHow hard would they be to hand focus?I manual focus on my 35mm, but that has visual focusing things in the penta prism.
compared to split screen focusing? way fucking harder. however the nikon's do have focus confirm built in to the viewfinder which is 1000x better than just guessing
Completely depends whether you're going to be shooting all video or not. If you're shooting any photography (which, if you're buying a DSLR, there's no reason you shouldn't be) it's not going to be too worth it to go with a D3200.
the D5000 and D3000 series DSLR's cannot meter with non AF glass in any way, so they're basically useless unless you're going live-view all the time (at which point, you might as well just buy mirrorless)
On top of that, they cannot autofocus without AF-s glass, so older screwdrive lenses (commonly marked Nikkor-AF or Nikkor AF-D) are only able to be manually focused.
For video, old manual non-AF lenses may be attached and used, and will work fine, but that's all they'll ever be good for, really (maybe timelapses if you get the exposure right)
To use non AF-s glass, you're going to need at least a D200, D90, D300, or a D7000 series. all of these can autofocus with the older screwdrive AF lenses, and they can also be setup manually to meter with old AI/AIS glass (called Non-CPU Lens Data in the menu)
If you have these lenses, and plan on shooting a bunch of stills with them along with shooting some video, pick up at least a D90 or a D7000.
You can find a D90 used for around 300-400, and a D7000 used around 600-650. Note that you will be limited to 24fps framerate for either.
Otherwise, you can buy either a used D5100 for about 300-350, or a D5200 for around 500$ and have a solid DSLR with all the framerates you need.
Then for a lens, pick up an AF-s 18-70 f3.5-4.5 for around 100-150 (probably the best entry-level nikkor zoom), and use these lenses you already have just for video or low light.
You can also get a split focus screen and replace the base matte screen with that. Will be far easier to manual-focus with this - still difficult however, because it's a small viewfinder to begin with.
Pretty sure you can pick up 3rd party screens for like 20-25 bucks on ebay/amazon.
I picked one up for my D600. SO worth it for going manual.
Start sucking Ken Rockwell's massive overly saturated dick.
Explanations of Terms Used in the Tables
"OK" means everything works as originally intended. "As intended" means a feature supported by both the camera and by the lens. AF lenses will not autofocus on manual focus cameras, and manual focus lenses won't autofocus on any camera, which is as intended, so that's OK. The invasive fisheyes never had any had metering and never had through-the-lens viewing, so for them, that's also OK.
Newer cameras have more potentially incompatible features than older cameras. A newer camera may have more incompatibility warnings below than an older camera, but may still provide more features than an older camera with an OK. For example, I mark when a matrix-metering camera loses that capability, but older cameras that never had a matrix meter are marked OK since they never had it. For instance, I mark the ancient invasive fisheyes as OK on some cameras, but these lenses offer no through-the-lens viewing, no metering and no focusing. You have to use an external meter and clip-on viewfinder with the first fisheyes of the 1960s!
P, S, A and M refer to Program, Shutter-preferred, Aperture-preferred and Manual exposure modes. On cameras on which a mode is supported by the camera, but not with a lens you've mounted, the camera will default seamlessly back to a mode which is supported. For instance, if Program mode isn't supported, the camera usually defaults to Aperture-preferred mode.
Matrix Metering, introduced in the 1983 FA, is Nikon's magic metering system which gives perfect exposures over many difficult conditions, including pointing directly into the sun. All Nikon's pro cameras have had it since the F4 of 1988, and all digital cameras have it. Only the FA manual focus camera has it, and most of the AF film cameras have it. See my individual camera reviews for details.
VR, Vibration Reduction, is a stand-alone feature. It either works or doesn't on any particular camera, regardless of the compatibility of everything else.
No AF is an inconvenience, but guess what: Nikon AF cameras still all have an electronic dot (or arrows and a dot) in the viewfinder which tell you when you've got perfect manual focus. It's slower, but just as accurate.
P Lenses: Not shown on the chart, P lenses are manual focus lenses with computer chips that enable full compatibility with all AF and digital cameras. You still need to focus by hand, using whatever electronic aids are in the camera, and otherwise they behave just like AF lenses.
G lenses are crippled versions of other lenses. G lenses have had their aperture rings removed to save cost. G is not a feature. G is a handicap. Most cameras haven't needed aperture rings for 20 years. If your camera needs it, you may be out of luck.
A "G" lens means nothing more than a lens without an aperture ring. It's like a blue "handicap" parking pass in the USA: it tells us nothing else about itself other than that it's handicapped. G lenses are either traditional AF or AF-S, and may or may not have VR. You have to read those columns, too. You only get the features that apply in all of the columns that apply to your lens. G takes away, it never adds features.
Used on a camera listed as "NO: underexposure" means that they will seem to work OK, but only shoot at their minimum aperture. You can use these, but will need to recalculate the exposure and shoot at only the smallest aperture, or more adventurous but dangerous, jam something into the spring-loaded stop-down lever in the back of the lens to keep the G lens open to a more practical or full aperture and meter accordingly. This is silly; if you want to shoot G lenses on film and your camera doesn't support it, today you can have your pick of great used cameras for under $100 that work perfectly with them.
Concatenation
Many of these lens designations can apply to the same lens, for instance, a lens could be DX, AF, VR and G all at the same time. Therefore you'll need to check under every designation which applies. For instance, the DX 10.5mm fisheye is both AF and G, and the 18-55mm II is AF-s and G, leaving open more potential avenues of incompatibility.
* VR is a very valuable stand-alone feature. All VR lenses are either traditional AF or AF-S, in which column you'll see how the other features work.
** G is not a feature. G is a handicap. G lenses are lenses which have been crippled by removing their aperture rings to save cost. This is a classic example of taking away features while making customers think they are getting something new. G eliminates many features with older cameras. Since G lens is a crippled version of something else, you must look in the other columns that apply to your lens, probably traditional AF or AF-s. The features that will work are only those present in all relevant columns.
*** Matrix metering with manual focus lenses in the digital SLRs (D2, D3, D200 and D300) expects you to enter the lens focal length and f/stop in the camera's menus. Otherwise all you get is CW and Spot.
Don't forget to say thank you to uncle Kenny.
DIPED_IN_SAUCEThanks for the help, I'm running to local camera store to grab a used d7000 or d5000 this weekend.Any other lenses I should be looking at? 18mm prime?
D5000..., did you read uncle Kenny's manifesto I c&p'ed?
That will have no AF on older lenses.
As far as an 18mm prime, for NIkon there are the Nikon 18mm f/3.5 which is old crusty, manual focus and about 500 bucks, but the way better one is the elusive Nikon 18mm f/2.8 AF-D, good lens but that will set you back well over a 1000 quid if you can even find one on sale since they only made 7000 of them.
For the same money you can get the equally awesome Zeiss Distagon T* 18mm F/3.5 ZF. or (ZF.2) but that's manual focus only.
But why do you want an 18mm prime?