Film Lenses on Digital Camera

Hello, this is my first posting. I have a Nikon F80 (which I love)

and 3 good lenses, Tamron 90mm Macro, Nikon 24-120mm VR, and Tamron

28-300mm. I want to buy the D70s and use these lenses. Will I have

any problems.

 

Thanks

The theory is they should work beautifully on the D70 if they work on the N80 or F80 film body.

 

In practice, some non-Nikon lenses have hiccups when fitted to a Nikon body designed after the lens is built. I have not heard of that being a factor for the Tamron lenses you mention.

 

If you're buying from a store (as oposed to mail order) just take the lenses along and fit them to the D70 to test them before buying... see for yourself that the autofocus works and the body can set apertures, etc.

 

Be well,

Monica, welcome to the Nikon Forum. The D70s and F80 are the digital and film versions of otherwise similar cameras. They use the same AF module and both cannot meter with no-CPU lenses.

 

The main difference is that the Nikon DSLR sensors are 16x24mm while 35mm film is 24x36mm. As a result, your lenses will appear to be longer with a narrower angle of view. There is where the so called 1.5x crop factor comes in. For example, on the D70s, your 24mm will appear to be like a 24 x 1.5 = 36mm for film. You "gain" on the tele side but lose on the wide end.

I'm not sure about your Tamron, Monica? But even if it didn't work fully, that shouldn't prevent you from buying a D70, you'll love it.

My Tamron 90/2.8 SP AF Macro works fine on the D70, I believe it would work on the D70s as well.

Monica, welcome to the forum. ;-) Anyway, it's usually the extreme wide-angle lenses that perform poorly on digital cameras (however, the 16mm f/3.5 is said to work nicely on the digital Nikons). The longer the focal length the better it will perform. In some cases with the same lens the digital image will be far superior to the film image.

If you already like your 24-120 VR you'll like it just as much on a dSLR. I have three wide angle zooms and use this one more often than the others.

 

These are all fairly contemporary designs and should perform as well on a dSLR as on your film Nikon. There are some older manual focus lenses that don't seem to perform quite as well on a dSLR as they do on a film camera. Sometimes problems such as chromatic aberrations appear exaggerated on a dSLR. But I haven't seen this on any of my autofocus lenses or even on my better AI and AI-S Nikkors.

Welcome to the forum, Monica. You'll soon learn as I have, that the advice dispensed here is quite valuable. Most of the people who have responded to my questions have forgotten more about photography than I'll ever know.

 

Now as to your question. I found myself in a similar situation. I had 2 "film" lenses (50mm 1.8, and 80-200mm 2.8 that I used on my N90s. They work wonderfully with my D70. The only thing that I've noticed is the 1.5 crop factor which was mentioned in the previous posts. Basically, it "extends" your lenses - which can often be helpful. However, you'll probably need to invest in a wide angle lens such as a 50mm 1.8 (which is cheap...usually under $100 - but an excellent lens) or spend about $250 on a digital wide angle zoom such as a 18-70 DX lens (not the crappy 18-55 DX kit lens) for a lot of your portraits. But until you become familiar with the D70, the lenses you listed should handle most of your needs.

I used to have Nikon's 20-35 f2.8, and it was a pretty good lens on film cameras. It didn't look as good on my DSLR (color fringing mainly), and it really wasn't very wide anymore either. But it did function just fine - I haven't had any problems in this regard with any lens. I've used an older Tokina 400 f5.6 auto focus lens that some people have said will only work with AF film cameras, but it worked fine on my DSLR too. I use a Fuji S2 which has the same AF system mentioned.

Hi Monica,

 

Welcome to the community. I have F70 and also Tamron 28-300. I also want to shift to D70. But I am confused as from the postings I got to know that in D70 -(1)- I will get minimum ISO as 200, -(2)- Every pic need to be Photoshoped (I was expecting that I will get crisp, colorful and sharp images from DSLR), and lastly -(3)- I understand that D70 is not good for landscapes.

 

So I thought that I should not go for D70 and stick to F70, and buy Nikon 28-105. Somehow I am not satisfied by the my Tamron 28-300. What is your opinion with your Tamron.

 

I hope I dindn't confuse you.

 

Regard,

 

Riz