Nikon Digital SLR System part 2

in-production

• Nikon F6, $2399 (review), autofocus, probably the best 35mm film SLR that will ever be made
• Nikon FM10 with 35-70 lens, $310, manual focus, designed for students in intro photography classes

discontinued

• Nikon F5, $1100
• Nikon F100, $550 (review), much lighter and smaller than the F-series and almost as durable; this was the standard "second body" that professionals carried in the film days
• Nikon N80, $217 (review), mostly plastic body, reasonably good autofocus and autoexposure systems; rememeber that it is the lens that determines image quality (might actually be cheaper as a kit with a crummy lens: Nikon N80 with 28-80 lens, $300 (review))
• Three incredibly cheap, all plastic, not very good bodies: Nikon N55, $150;
Nikon N65, $488 (review); Nikon N75, $129
• Nikon FM3A, $800 (review), hard to find; Nikon came out with this all-metal manual focus body in 2001. It is a beautifully balanced camera and, with a 50/1.4 lens, will take much better pictures than what 99 percent of digital camera owners capture with their cheap kit zoom lenses.

Nomenclature

F-number: lower is better.

VR is "vibration reduction", a technology lifted from camcorder image stabilizers. The lens electronically compensates for unsteady hands. VR is especially important at long focal lengths, e.g., 200mm and above, because the lens magnifies camera shake at the same time it is magnifying the subject. A VR lens will allow you to use slower shutter speeds without introducing camera shake. The alternative to a VR lens would be mounting the camera on a tripod or using a high ISO setting, which reduces image quality but allows the use of higher shutter speeds.

"ED" is "extra-low dispersion" glass, a more expensive and higher quality glass that reduces chromatic aberration, in which light of different colors takes different paths through the lens, which would result in a dot of white light being fuzzed up by the time it reaches the film or sensor.

"IF" is internal focus, meaning that the lens does not change physical length as you focus on subjects that are closer or farther away.

"DX" are Nikon's lenses that only work on its small-sensor digital SLR bodies, i.e., they don't cast a large enough image circle to be used on a film camera.

"FX" refers to the full frame sensor

"G" lenses are Nikon's newest lenses. They don't have an aperture ring, which is a shame because it means that you are forced to adjust the aperture with a command wheel on the camera. The G lenses don't work on older bodies.

AF-S is "silentwave motor". Old-style Nikon autofocus lenses did not have motors in the lens, but relied on a screwdriver blade in the camera body to turn the focus ring. An AF-S lens has a built-in ultrasonic motor, a technology copied from the Canon EOS system. When using an AF-S lens, the photographer can push the shutter release (or a button on the rear of the camera, if a custom function is set) and let the autofocus system do its best, then touch up the focus manually by twisting the lens ring. The AF-S lenses also focus faster and more quietly.

Normal Lenses

A normal or standard lens is light in weight and approximates the perspective of the human eye. Normal lenses have large maximum apertures, indicated by small f-numbers such as f/1.4 or f/1.8, and thereby gather much more light than zoom lenses. It may be possible to take a photo with a normal lens in light only 1/8th or 1/16th as bright as would be required for the same photo with a consumer-priced zoom lens. Another advantage of the large maximum aperture is that the viewfinder will be correspondingly brighter and therefore easier to use in dim light. (SLRs keep the lens wide open for viewing and stop down to whatever aperture you have set just before taking the picture; this is why the viewfinder always looks the same even if you switch from f/1.4 to f/8 to f/16.)