Nikon DSLR and manual focus lenses

NikonAIS · Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2014 3:19 am Post subject:

When I finally decided to get a DSLR, after many years of resisting to take the "digital" plunge, my choice of camera was predicated solely on one thing, the fact that I had a couple dozen AI and AIS lenses from 16mm to 600mm and compatibility was a hard and fast requirement. Autofocus held no fascination for me. Why should it? I had been focusing manually for 40 years and it posed no limitations for me. I had owned two zooms in my life, an 80-200mm f/4.5 non-AI and 36-72mm f/3.5 Series E, but they too were gone by this time. I also had no desire whatsoever to get anything in DX format as I did not want my oft used 20mm Nikkor to become a 30mm Nikkor, I already had a 35mm Nikkor. The D3 series at the time was more than I was willing to pay so the D700 with the accessory battery pack seemed to be the best alternative. Still, it came to about 3 grand, which was a hard sell to my wife. I explained to her that at the time I got my F2 and MD-2, the price back then was probably close in "equivalent dollars" to what the D700 was costing me. 3 years on I am still very happy with it though I am still a somewhat ambivalent when it comes to digital. The D700 is a workhorse in work where a client wants proof sheets that day, something that would be very difficult to pull off with film since I do not do photography as a full time profession. Having looked at one in a camera store, several trusty Nikkors in hand, it became immediately obvious to me that the standard focusing screen simply was not going to cut it. I ordered a microprism/ground glass screen from focusingscreen.com the same day I ordered my D700. It arrived the day after the camera did. It took 10 minutes to swap out the screens and it has worked out beautifully. I have been looking for a more up to date camera and looked hard at the D800 but since no one offered manual focusing screens at the time, I looked at a D3X as D3 screens were plentiful. Now that focusingscreen.com makes screens for the D800 I may look at it again later on this year.

In spite of all of this, 95% of all of my personal images are still shot with film, the majority of which are shot with the Hasselblad unless I need an equivalent focal length I do not have with the Blad

otto_tz · Joined: 31 Jul 2014 Posts: 4

Hi everyone. I was wondering which focal length is the best to shoot full length portraits on a DX cropped sensor camera (Nikon D3100)? I own a Carl Zess Pancolar 50/1.8 and Chinon 135/2.8. I was hoping that Chinon would be able to take that kind of shots, but it is somehow too short. What focal lengths should I check out and which lens are the best?