penmachine

Manual focus is, after all, the way we all had to do it until the late 1980s, and many of our

photos turned out just fine (though I regret the loss of split prisms on focusing screens for

that reason).

Essentially, this reflects Nikon's approach that, if you have a bunch of old lenses, you're

supposed to be buying their more expensive cameras to get better support for those lenses.

The D40/D40x don't even have a body focus motor, for instance, while the D80 and up do

(and the D50 did).

As mentioned, Quantaray is Ritz Camera's Sigma re-brand. I've had good luck with a

couple of Quantaray zooms, one manual focus Nikon-mount 28-200 mm I bought in the

early '80s and which was stolen in 1991; and a similar, autofocus 70-210 mm I bought in

1995 for my F601 and still use on my D50. (It is better than the earlier lens.)

For the money (quite low) they perform extremely well, and I would recommend them over

the low-end lenses from Nikon (or, presumably, Canon, Olympus, Pentax, et. al.), which

tend to have a price premium just for the name. The Quantaray/Sigmas, being consumer-

grade, are not as good as the higher-end lenses from Nikon and the others, but you

wouldn't expect that at the price anyway.

I also second the recommendation for the Nikon 50 mm 1.8 fixed (non-zoom) lens. When I

first got into photography, cameras came with 50 mm lenses instead of zooms, and I think

that was a better idea because they work better in low light (wider apertures) and can be

better built for low cost -- Nikon's 50/1.8 is especially outstanding, and extremely well

priced. I would actually recommend that instead of a zoom, until you get a sense of which

zooms might do you better. Keep in mind that a 50 mm lens is a mild telephoto on

Nikon's digital SLRs, rather than a normal lens as it was on 35 mm Nikons, so you might

need something else for wide-angle shots.

But, compared to the low-end kit Nikkors, the Quantarays are nothing to sneeze at either.

I just bought a 24mm Quantaray "Tech-10" (no idea what that designation means) from

eBay, and we'll see how that does.