Old Nikon lens for current DSLR

[dkdixie]

Hey group, need a little help. Since retiring, I'm just getting back into photography after 25+ year layoff. I have quite a few old Nikkor non-auto focus lens, fisheye, 50mm, 28-85, 35-200 & 500mm. Can they be used with new Nikon DSLR equipment; ie D80 or other models. If so, what results can I expect.Any comments/help would be appreciated.

[another view]

Some of the DSLR's (and film cameras for that matter) won't do any metering with lenses that don't have CPU's in them, which is about 99% of the manual focus lenses - all AF lenses have CPU's. Other than that they'll work but that's not exactly convenient. Also, some DSLR's aren't the greatest for manual focusing. Both of these are with the less expensive DSLR's and the D80 may be the cutoff for most of that. I haven't picked one up myself but I hear the viewfinder is a lot brighter than some of the others in it's price range. From what I remember, the D200 will work with the manual focus lenses.

One thing, with the smaller digital sensor your wide angle lenses won't be quite so wide anymore. The perspective is there but they're cropped a lot, to a factor of 1.5 (20mm lens has a 30mm angle of view).

[deckcadet]

Also, some of the really really old lenses are physically incompatible without replacement or modification of the aperture ring. Others, such as fisheyes requiring permanent mirror lock-up, are not compatible.

If you could supply your own photos/descriptions, it would be a big help.