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Man-Fai Wong · 05-09-2006, 10:27 PM

AFAIK, ALL of Nikon's DSLRs have been compatible w/ their F mount autofocus SLR lenses (and also 3rd party lenses). The only main issues about compatibility w/ their recent lineups of the past few years are:

1. The lower end bodies like D50, D70 and the older D100 did not provide metering support for their manual lenses and will require manual focus lenses to be AI capable -- you can often get a fully manual lens enhanced to be AI albeit at some significant cost. IOW, if you have AI manual lenses, you can use them in full manual mode w/ those lower end bodies.

2. Due to the DX format of all Nikon DSLRs to date, you will experience the ~1.5x crop factor on all your SLR lenses, so your 35mm wideangle lens will behave like a ~45mm normal lens in terms of FOV. Basically, the outer parts of the image circle is effectively cropped away. The effect will make it seem like your telephoto lenses get a ~1.5x telephoto multiplier, and most people treat it as such. And on the wide end, well, you'll probably need to buy a new wider angle lens to compensate for the crop factor.

Also, if all else are equal, the crop factor yields a smaller viewfinder in the body. So you should expect to see a smaller viewfinder from a digital body that has design comparable to a film body counterpart. If viewfinder size is important to you, you'll probably want to go w/ the D200 or higher for a Nikon body, especially if you also want to use manual lenses.

_Man_

05-09-2006, 10:27 PM	#2 of 4
Man-Fai Wong Member Location: New York City Join Date: Aug 2001 Local Time: 09:50 PM Local Date: 10-14-2008 Posts: 2,494	Re: Curious but... AFAIK, *ALL* of Nikon's DSLRs have been compatible w/ their F mount autofocus SLR lenses (and also 3rd party lenses). The only main issues about compatibility w/ their recent lineups of the past few years are: 1. The lower end bodies like D50, D70 and the older D100 did not provide metering support for their manual lenses and will require manual focus lenses to be AI capable -- you can often get a fully manual lens enhanced to be AI albeit at some significant cost. IOW, if you have AI manual lenses, you can use them in full manual mode w/ those lower end bodies. 2. Due to the DX format of all Nikon DSLRs to date, you will experience the ~1.5x crop factor on all your SLR lenses, so your 35mm wideangle lens will behave like a ~45mm normal lens in terms of FOV. Basically, the outer parts of the image circle is effectively cropped away. The effect will make it seem like your telephoto lenses get a ~1.5x telephoto multiplier, and most people treat it as such. And on the wide end, well, you'll probably need to buy a new wider angle lens to compensate for the crop factor. Also, if all else are equal, the crop factor yields a smaller viewfinder in the body. So you should expect to see a smaller viewfinder from a digital body that has design comparable to a film body counterpart. If viewfinder size is important to you, you'll probably want to go w/ the D200 or higher for a Nikon body, especially if you also want to use manual lenses. _Man_ Just another amateur learning to paint w/ "the light of the world".