Can a Nikon 55mm Micro be used on TV or AV mode with a D70 etc

[kerinm123]

Hi, Can someone please answer if a Nikon MICRO-NIKKOR 55mmf2.8 Ais Lens can be used with the Nikon D70 on TV and AV modes or is it only usable with stopdown metering ?...Am a beginner to Digital....Thanks...David

[Photo-John]

Good question. Hope you don't mind that I moved it to the Digital SLR forum. You're more likely to get an answer here. I would think it would work fine. But I know that Nikon did make some changes to their newer bodies regarding metering. I just can't remember what the specific results were. I know there are some Nikon dSLR users here who will have answers for you, though.

Welcome to the site!

[Franglais]

Hi, Can someone please answer if a Nikon MICRO-NIKKOR 55mmf2.8 Ais Lens can be used with the Nikon D70 on TV and AV modes or is it only usable with stopdown metering ?...Am a beginner to Digital....Thanks...David

The Ais lenses will fit on the D70 but metering is totally disabled. I believe that the D200 can meter with Ais lenses.

TV and AV modes are Canon terms. The equivalent in Nikon terms are S and A modes, I believe.

Charles

[Photo-John]

Charles-
What do you mean by "totally disabled?" You can still control exposure with the manual aperture control on the lens and the shutter speed, right? But the TTL metering doesn't work at all? Not even if you stop down? Does that mean you need to wing it and set your exposure by making test shots and checking the histogram? Or is there a way to get useful meter readings before exposing?

Thanks - I need to know this stuff.

[another view]

Charles-
What do you mean by "totally disabled?" You can still control exposure with the manual aperture control on the lens and the shutter speed, right? But the TTL metering doesn't work at all? Not even if you stop down? Does that mean you need to wing it and set your exposure by making test shots and checking the histogram? Or is there a way to get useful meter readings before exposing?

Thanks - I need to know this stuff.

John, "yes" to all your questions. You can either guess the exposure and check the histogram or use a separate meter. There is no in-camera metering with Nikon's lenses that don't have CPU's built in. These lenses are about 99% of their manual focus lenses. One I know that will meter is the 500 f4 P manual focus lens because it has a CPU. This is why I sold my optically-excellent 300 f4.5 shortly after I got my Fuji S2, which is built on a N80 body. The N80 is one of these cameras...

AI and AIS are two of their series of manual focus lenses. There's also what's known as pre-AI or non-AI which are really old. None of these (again, very few exceptions) have CPU's.

All of these lenses have the same base and will usually fit on any camera. There are some exceptions like a few of the really esoteric lenses need mirror lockup because the rear element would be in the mirror's path, and something about having to make a minor modification to use either really old cameras and newer lenses or vice-versa...