Lens mounting on DSLR's

[John C Keith]

Hey guys I have a question for the smart photog's among us.

I am in the very early search for a digital SLR to replace my 15 year old 35mm SLR. I hope to spend some of the "off season" in the woods taking some pics of what ever comes around, without having to pay to process the film.

I have always enjoyed photography and all that but have never had much $$ to drop into it and therefore do not know much about different cameras.

My 35mm has what I would call a bayonet style lens attachment... it has three tabs that match three slots on the camera body and twist on.  Match the marks and tabs and the lens is on.

Do the new(er) DSLR's work the same?

I guess what I am asking is if my old lenses will work on a newer DSLR.

My budget is very limited, and if I can save some $$ by using my old lenses it would be great.

Any advice?  How about on DSLR's for under $3-400?  New, used, factory refurb'd don't matter to me as long as it works.

Thanks in advance for the help.

[Ray Hammond]

I was wondering the same thing, JC. I have a Nikon N80 35mm SLR with two lenses...and would like to know if they will fit on my Konica/Minolta Dimage A2,8mp DSLR thats a couple years old.

[Chris O]

If your looking for a sweet deal I would suggest contacting the manufactorer and try to get a refurbished model. I beleive they come witht he same warrenty as a new one.

Most   Nikon  35mm slr lenses will fit on   Nikon DSLR's but not all of them. That goes the same with cannon and I believe minolta's lenses will fit on sony's dslr.

[Ray Hammond]

so they will NOT fit the Konica/Minolta, right?

[Jason R. Wesbrock]

Ray,

I wouldn't think so.

[Ray Hammond]

Its too bad they don't have standards that require them to be interchangeable.

[Tim Schoenborn]

Hey guys......

I hang out on this site and do a lot of reading but do not interact as much as maybe I should.

I am a fulltime working professional photographer. I thought I would at least contribute to this thread and maybe lend a hand. As far as lenses being interchangeable between brands is quite scarce. Nikon has Nikon mounts and Canon has Canon mounts etc.......... There are specific reasons for this that would take to long to write about on this forum.

And the thing that is starting to happen today in the digital DSLR world is that certain lenses are being made for digital exclusively to deal with the crop factor created by the sensor that captures the image. As an example most of the Nikons DSLR's have a 1.5 magnification factor based on the sensor in the camera. So a 200mm lens on a 1.5 magnification is really a 300mm.

To not get too carried away I would suggest John looking for a nice used Nikon D70s with a lens package on Ebay or the many many other venues out there for used equipment. I am a Nikon shooter so my opinion might be a bit swayed, but I have used a D70 from time to time and feel for what you pay it is a really nice camera. LIke I said, I am a Nikon shooter and my camera bodies are in the $5000 range just for the body alone. So my endorsement of the D70 is a genuine one based on being pretty impressed with what it can do based on what you can pick one up for which is around the money you stated in your thread.

I would be more than glad to help anyone out on this site anytime in regards to camera issues or anything else in regards to photography.

Tim ;-)

 www.timschoenborn.com

[OKCtradguy]

Excellent post Tim.  I was going to mention the crop factor but you beat me to it.  There are standards to the lens attachment systems but they are usually company specific.  After all, Nikon wouldn't want to use Canon's lens bayonet system; that would be akin to saying that Canon has a better system than Nikon.

Tim, you should really check out the D80.  I like it quite a bit better than the D70.  Also, Nikon recently announced a new entry level camera, the D40.

[Phil Magistro]

The Dx lenses that Nikon makes are specifically for digital bodies and won't work on film bodies.  But the lenses made for film cameras will work fine on digital bodies.  Nikon has always tried to keep their lenses backward compatible.  So John, if your old lenses are Nikon you may find that they will work on the newest bodies.  Depending on the type of lens  you may give up some features like auto focus and you may encounter some metering difficulties but if you can work through that the lens will do fine.  Nikon lenses also work on Fuji and Kodak cameras (DSLR's).

Given John's $300-400 price constraint I'd say the D70s is the best value.  The D80 is way out of that price range and the D40 gives up too many features.  I've used a D70 in the past and it is a fine camera.

[JBiorn]

There ARE adaptor rings available----but you lose so much with these that they are just almost not worth using.

 Still shooting film and loving it, Jeff