Please help with lenses!

[megan_lawton]

Hello, i am new to the 35 mm camera. I recently purchased a NIkon n75, which as

far as i can tell is a great camera. When i purchased it, it came with a lense,

a Vivitar... a unknown brand to me.

When i hook the camera up and try to shoot, i cant get the lense to focus. Is

this at fault to me, or is in the incorrect lense.

I thought that you could hook any lens up to any 35 mm camera body. Wrong?

 

Any one who is very knownledgable of the NIkon brand, could you please reply of

email me.... tickledbyirony@aol.com

 

 

Thanks a lot. :)

[anupam]

What Vivitar lens are you using? Is it a manual focus or autofocus lens? This information should be written around the rim of the lens or on the barrel.

[anupam]

<i>I thought that you could hook any lens up to any 35 mm camera body. Wrong?</i>

<p> I just noticed your last line. Yes, this is wrong. Various camera manufacturers have various lens 'mounts.' Only lenses made for that specific mount by the camera manufacturer or third party makers like Vivitar will fit a particular camera.

 

<p>Then of course there are lenses for non-35mm film sizes, but let's ignore that for the moment.<p>-A

[ecarter]

Click <A HREF="http://www.nikonians.org/html/resources/nikon_articles/other/compatibility.html">HERE</A> to see a lens compatability chart for Nikon cameras and Nikon lenses.

 

<P>In short, no - not all Nikon cameras can accept all Nikon lenses, though the N75 can accept a pretty wide range of them. In some cases, not all features or modes are supported with all lenses. This is the nature of the beast when you have a product line that goes back decades and decades (or for the more cynical, when you want to get people to purchase more stuff as a company). :-D

 

<P>We'd need to know the model Vivitar lens you have to know for sure what the problem is - it could very well be a manual focus lens in which case autofocus won't be an option with it.

[ky2]

I've had two vivitars. One, was a terrible ultra-zoom, that I had to shoot at f/8 to keep it reasonably sharp. The other one, was quite respectable, but was never a true favorite of mine.

 

Get a real lens. Check your budget, get a Nikkor. Any Nikkor would do. If you want to start somewhere sharp and fast, get the 50/1.8 AFD.

[anupam]

<i>Get a real lens. Check your budget, get a Nikkor. Any Nikkor would do.</i>

<p>Yaron, my sharpest lens is a Vivitar and it outperforms comparable Nikkors. While I would agree that the average Nikkor might be better than the average Vivitar, it is absolutely not true that any Nikkor would do better. There are Nikkors that suck and Vivitar that absolutely ooze class - the older series 1s are hard to beat and I have loved all three I have laid my hands on.<p>-A

[andrew robertson]

There are Vivitar lenses out there that have every bit the cult following as some Nikkors. Some of them were built by Perkin Elmer, who made the Hubble telescope. Those guys could probably show Nikon a few things.

[vivek iyer]

Andrew, That may or may not be a good thing! Did they use "Hubble" units or standard metric units while collimating their lenses is the most important question.

 

Perkin Elmer made the Vivitar Series 1 450/4.5 and the 800 f/11 "solid-cat" lenses. Famed but not all that spectacular.

 

The modern AF lenses bearing Vivitar name are not much of a lenses and have nothing to do with some of the good quality lenses made under the Vivitar name.

 

I will second Yaron's suggestion. Get a "real" lens.

[megan_lawton]

According to the box, it is a VIVITAR 28-80 mm f/3.5-5.6 Auto Focus lens.... oh dear., its auto focus, does this mean the camera will automatically set itself up correctly.,... Even when i put the camera in auto mode it is STILL blurry.... this is incredibly frustrating. :o

[anupam]

Megan, is it a Nikon mount lens? Can you mount it on the camera properly? Do you know how to put the camera in autofocus mode or how to manually focus a lens? If not, maybe you should reas the manual or a simple beginner's book to use this camera. Otherwise a point and shoot would be less hassle.

 

-A