Time to fall in love with manual everything lenses :)

Thirdfox

Yay, won the lens for 15 euro (50mm f2 Nikkor H pre-AI) - delivery from Italy will cost another 15 euro though heard good things about it (

Can't wait to have to be forced to think like back in the film days (I have used a film SLR before - but even that had a light meter built in). Sunny f16 here I come (although having an instant histrogram will be a great help )

All metal construction - with the classic manual focusing ridges

And of course I shall soon be able to do some amateur macro shots too.

Happy days.

I shall be inflicting my first few attempts at manual exposure on you guys soon enough.

440Hz

You'll love it! I like to head out with an OM1 and fully manual lenses every now and again, when im in a bored patch.

magicbastarder

are you planning on mounting it on a DSLR body?
surely you'd get metering on aperture priority?

Thirdfox

God no... See my Pre-AI Nikon conversion thread earlier...

In fact I can't mount this 30+ year old lens on any model higher than the D40 series as it will cause damage to some tab (unless I converted to AI first).

Even then only D200 and above will allow metering.

But it is going to pair up nicely on the D40 (I have a magnified viewfinder anyway) - cute little thing that should be able to take some pretty good photos (in the right hands ).

magicbastarder

reason i asked was because you get metering in manual and aperture priority on olympus DSLRs with the OM zuiko lenses.

DaireQuinlan

magicbastarder wrote: »

reason i asked was because you get metering in manual and aperture priority on olympus DSLRs with the OM zuiko lenses.

Nikon have a bit of a screwed up policy in that regard. Manual lenses (ai and up) and all AF/AFD/AF-S lenses (except for G lenses) have a ridge on the back of the lens mounted on the aperture ring. This engages with a tab on the camera body so that the camera knows what aperture the lens has been set to. All film cameras have this tab. The D100/D200/D300 and D1/D2/D3 also have this tab. None of the cheaper nikon digitals have it. So its either a cost saving measure or a deliberate attempt to get people who need to mount manual lenses to buy the more expensive bodies.

Then there are PRE-AI lenses, which are pretty old, the camera body needs the aperture tab to be able to fold up out of the way as the lens has a solid ring all the way along the back where the truncated ridge is on the AI lenses. Any attempt to mount these would damage the camera body, part of this ring has to be milled away in the appropriate spot to turn it into a (sort of) ai lens and enable it to be mounted. Now, because the d40/d80 etc don't HAVE this aperture tab, pre-ai lenses can be mounted.

Thats the simple run-down at least :-)

Thirdfox

Great overview - one small correction though - I think only the D40/D40x can safely mount pre-AI lenses without modification. The exception being those lenses that need full time mirror lock up (the D40 doesn't have that).

The D50, 70, 80 etc. all need the same modification to get to AI but still can't meter with them.

magicbastarder

there's no aperture coupling on the adapter i use - which means that the camera doesn't know what aperture is selected, and the aperture is stopped down constantly on the lens - so it slows you down; you compose and focus wide open, and then stop the lens down and expose.

the camera doesn't seem to mind not knowing which aperture is selected, it just exposes based on the light coming in.

DaireQuinlan

magicbastarder wrote: »

there's no aperture coupling on the adapter i use - which means that the camera doesn't know what aperture is selected, and the aperture is stopped down constantly on the lens - so it slows you down; you compose and focus wide open, and then stop the lens down and expose.
the camera doesn't seem to mind not knowing which aperture is selected, it just exposes based on the light coming in.

Yeah, thats why I always found this thing with the cheaper nikon digital models a bit suspect, there's no metering at all as I understand it. I mean I can stick anything I want in front of my F4 with no coupling at all, case in point is a Macro bellows, no linkage at all between the lens and the body, and the body will still meter just fine. Same deal with the D200 and up. Mount to the cheaper bodies and you're stuck chimping or using an external lightmeter and full manual mode. As far as I can see there's really no need for that, except for some corporate/marketing decision to cripple the cheaper bodies.

Hugh_C

Here's a useful compatibility chart by Thom Hogan, perhaps you've come across it already ...

Thirdfox

I may have seen it somewhere before - I knew for certain though that the D40 works with this lens.

And if I can't use it with my future upgrade...I could always reverse it and turn it into a macro lens

haz

So if I get a D200 then my old lenses will meter? I took these today (2mm long dead Dermestid carpet-eating beetles, head and eyes tucked underneath in 2nd picture) by adjusting the off-camera flash output on a Nikon D50, until I got a reasonable histogram.

Thirdfox

Well depends on how old (the lens that I just bought will damage your camera if you attempt to mount it)

However, anything within 30 years should be okay (look for AIS, AI or AIP). And you'll get metering too.

haz

Thirdfox wrote: »

Well depends on how old (the lens that I just bought will damage your camera if you attempt to mount it)

I have used all kinds of manual Tamron Adaptall, Vivitar, M42 and T-mount stuff (because I don't throw anything away) on my D50, but I didn't realise any Nikon could meter off them, unlike Olympus and some Canon bodies. Some of the old lenses have a great feel and the optics seem great - I have an all-manual Tamron 70-210 zoom that is more pleasant to use than my new Sigma 70-300mm, with slightly wider aperture.

Thirdfox

Oh, the non-Nikon lenses cannot be made to meter with any Nikon body as far as I know.

haz

Thirdfox wrote: »

Oh, the non-Nikon lenses cannot be made to meter with any Nikon body as far as I know.

These are old, non-cpu lenses with no electronics and no contacts in them. According to the compatability chart hughchal posted a link to, the D200 and upwards will meter off them but D40, 50 and 80 will not - so it is entirely histogram feedback and re-shooting. The attached is from the cheetah run at Fota, Tamron Adaptall-2 at 210mm.

Thirdfox

Thom Hogan's chart is only for Nikon lenses...

Poor rabbit!