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Nikon Digital SLR System

a photo.net guide by Philip Greenspun

Motorcycle convention in North Dakota Brooks Falls, Katmai National Park

The Nikon system of digital single-lens reflex (SLR) bodies and lenses is a popular choice among serious photographers worldwide. This page makes it easy to shop for Nikon digital bodies and Nikkor lenses. Every component manufactured by Nikon is covered, plus a few exceptionally good third-party components. If you are new to photography, you might want to start with my article "Building a Digital SLR System".

This article goes through every section of the Nikon system and concludes with some starter system recommendations.

Nikon Camera Bodies

Most Nikon digital SLR bodies incorporate a "small sensor" or "APS-C" sized sensor. This is smaller than the standard 35mm film frame and effectively multiplies the magnification of any lens attached to the body. A small sensor is good for telephoto work, such as wildlife photography, where a 300mm lens that is too short for bird photography on a film camera becomes a 450mm (effective) lens. In November 2007, Nikon added the D3, their first full-frame sensor DSLR professional camera to their arsenal of DSLR bodies. The full-frame sensor bodies are good for wide angle photography, low light photography, and optimum image quality.

  • Nikon D40, 18-55mm kit (review) (discontinued), 6 MP and good enough for most family photography; best user interface of any digital SLR, with example photos displayed on the rear LCD to show appropriate situations for different settings. Note that the D40 requires SD memory cards rather than the standard CF cards used by other Nikon bodies
  • Nikon D40x, $590 (review), same idea, but 10 MP; if you care about image quality, pair with Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC for Nikon, $439
  • Nikon D60, $561 (review), 10 MP, Nikon's latest addition to the line of small-body DSLRs, an upgrade to the D40/D40x
  • Nikon D80 (review), 10 MP, Nikon's answer to the Canon Digital Rebel XTi; the kit zooms are reasonably good, but too slow for indoor usage
  • Nikon D90, $847 (review), 12 MP, Nikon's latest prosumer model, includes GPS and a movie mode capable of capturing 1280x720 pixel images at 24 fps HD with sound.
  • Nikon D200 (review) (discontinued), 10 MP, great for advanced amateurs
  • Nikon D300 (review), 12 MP, released at the same time as the D3, a fast camera with 51 AF points
  • Nikon D2HS, $5987 (review), only 4 Megapixels but tremendously fast; intended for sports photojournalists
  • Nikon D2Xs (review), 12 MP, before the full-frame sensor cameras came along, this was Nikon's top-of-the-line camera
  • Nikon D700, $2697 (review), 12 MP, D3 image quality at about half the price
  • Nikon D3 (review), 12 MP, Nikon's first full frame sensor DSLR
  • Nikon D3X, $7999 (review), 24.5 MP, D3 image quality with about double the resolution
  • Nikon D3s, $5200 (review), 12MP, D3 image quality with ISO up to 12,800 (102,400 with boost), and HD video capture

For nostalgia buffs and collectors, Nikon still makes film bodies:

    in-production

  • Nikon F6, $2399 (review), autofocus, probably the best 35mm film SLR that will ever be made
  • Nikon FM10 with 35-70 lens, $320, 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

Shirley Greenspun. Manhattan 1995.

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.)

    digital bodies

  • Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC for Nikon, $439, ultrasonic motor, equivalent to a 45mm perspective on a film camera; Nikon does not bother to make a competitive lens
  • Nikon 35mm f/2.0 AF, $360 (review); designed for a film camera and the viewfinder will be only half as bright as the Sigma, but possibly higher optical quality, especially since you're only using the center portion of the lens.

    • film AF

  • Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor, $125, a great lightweight bargain and one of the highest optical quality lenses in the Nikon line; you could use this as a portrait lens on a digital SLR
  • Nikon 50mm f/1.4D AF Nikkor, $320 (review), less than one f-stop faster than the 1.8; similar optical quality

    • film manual focus

  • Nikon 45mm f/2.8 Nikkor AI-S Manual Focus, $400, very compact and designed cosmetically to go with the FM3a nostalgia body
  • Nikon 50mm f/1.2 Nikkor AI-S Manual Focus, $670, a half-stop faster than the 50/1.4, but you lose autofocus and the image quality at f/1.2 is not very good

In terms of flare, contrast, and sharpness, these are the highest quality lenses that you will ever attach to your camera. If you can do the job with a normal lens, as many of the 20th Century's greatest photographers did, you can save yourself a lot of weight and cost. There are good zoom lenses, but they are very expensive and heavy.

Wide-to-Telephoto Zoom Lenses

Atlantic City Boardwalk, New Jersey

A wide-to-tele zoom is what you get as a standard "kit" lens with a cheaper digital SLR body. The range goes from moderately wide through normal to moderately telephoto. They are good when you are too busy to change lenses, e.g., at a wedding reception. The 24mm perspective (full-frame) will capture a table of guests; the 70mm or 105mm long end is good for a flattering portrait. The main weakness of these lenses is that the cheaper ones have a very small maximum aperture, e.g., f/4 or f/5.6, and can only be used in bright light, on a tripod, or with a blast of on-camera flash that gives everyone a moon face.

Wide-angle Zoom Lenses

Good for general-purpose dramatic wide angle photography. More distortion than wide-angle prime lenses, which makes them less suitable for photographing architecture (though many kinds of distortion can be fixed by a PhotoShop wizard).

Telephoto Zoom Lenses

These are good complements to a normal lens when traveling. The long end may not be useful indoors due to a small maximum aperture.

Wide-angle Prime Lenses

Sunset. Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

These let you get close to your subject while still showing a lot of background information. Wide angle lenses are good for "environmental portraits" in which the subject occupies most of the frame, but nearby objects are in sharp focus. Photojournalism has gone gradually wider and wider over the years. A typical photo in a newspaper these days might be taken at 20-24mm on a full-frame camera, which would be 14-17mm on a small sensor digital camera.

A prime wide angle lens will have much lower distortion of vertical and horizontal lines than a zoom lens and is therefore preferred for architectural photography. All of these lenses are designed for film and full-frame sensor cameras.

Telephoto Prime Lenses

A small bird in his nest of leaves. Nikon 300/2.8 AF lens, Velvia film, Nikon 8008 body

A prime or fixed focal length telephoto lens offers maximum image quality, light gathering capability (aperture), and magnification. The good ones are big, heavy, and designed for use on a monopod or tripod. Sports and wildlife photography require these lenses. Nikon does not make any telephoto lenses specifically for their small-sensor digital cameras, which is a shame because it would be possible to cut the cost and weight dramatically without the requirement of casting a 24x36mm image for an old film camera.

The better Nikon telephoto lenses are designed to work optically with the teleconverters. Image quality will be acceptable, even at maximum aperture. As noted above, however, there is no free lunch. A teleconverter provides additional magnification, but the overall amount of light gathered by the lens remains the same. Thus, you lose one f-stop of light with a 1.4X converter and two f-stops with a 2X converter. The viewfinder will be dimmer and the camera will have a tougher time autofocusing. With a 2X converter and a slower lens, therefore, you will lose the ability to autofocus with many bodies.

These are heavy lenses. If you have a tripod quick-release system, get plates for each lens and remember to mount the lens, not the camera body, to the tripod.

Macro Lenses

M and Ms.

Macro lenses let you fill your photograph with a subject that is physically small. The longer the focal length of the macro lens, the farther away you can be from your subject, which is important with live insects, for example. A macro lens that goes down to "1:1" can be used to take a frame-filling photo of something that is 24x36mm (1x1.5 inches) in size, the same dimensions as a frame of 35mm film or the sensor on a full-frame digital body. All Nikon macro lenses can be used for ordinary photographic projects as well, i.e., they will focus out to infinity if desired. Note that a "macro zoom" will focus reasonably close, but is not a substitute for a "macro lens".

Flashes

Ali and Michelle, Australians visiting Glacier National Park

The easiest way to ruin a photograph is to use on-camera flash, which blasts the subject with an unflattering light. The resulting lack of shadows means that it is tough for a viewer to make out the features of the subject. On-camera flash is useful outdoors for filling in harsh shadows. Otherwise, the professional uses flash mostly bouncing up towards the ceiling or held as far away from the camera as possible. This is why the professional camera bodies don't incorporate the pop-top flashes the way that consumer bodies do.

Nikon makes a great line of products, both wired and wireless, for coordinating and controlling multiple flashes. Covering all of these accessories is beyond the scope of this article, but if you are going to use flash as a primary light you should consider added additional speedlights and mounting them off-camera.

Perspective Correction Lenses

A perspective correction (PC) lens lets you take a picture of a building, from ground level, without the lines converging and making it look as though the building is falling over. It works because you are able to shift the front portion of the lens up, the lens being designed to cast a larger image than the 35mm film frame. To some extent, this is obsolete because these kinds of linear distortions can be fixed post-exposure in a digital editing tool such as Adobe PhotoShop. Some of Nikon's older PC lenses were designed for their film bodies and are manual focus. If you are deeply interested in in-camera perspective adjustments, note that Canon makes a more flexible line of "tilt-shift" lenses that come closer to what is possible with a 4x5 view camera (cloth over head, bellows, sheet film).

Accessories

For a camera body and one lens, the average professional photographer would not use a case at all. To hold a camera system, you should probably find a nearby professional camera shop and experiment to see how your gear fits. I usually end up preferring Tamrac and Lowe cases. Here are a few ideas:

Recommended Starter Nikon SLR Systems

Glen Canyon Dam (Arizona/Utah border)

Average family:

Serious photographer:

More

Discontinued and Miscellaneous

Digital Cameras • D70s • D2Hs • D1 • D100 • D1H • D1x • D70 • Coolpix P1/P2 • Coolpix 2500 • Coolpix 5000 • Coolpix 775 • Coolpix 8700 • Coolpix 995

35mm Film Cameras • SLR Body Comparison Chart • F2A and 50/1.4 • F100 • F100 • F3/T and F3 • F4 • F6 • FE and FE2 • FM3A • N65/F65 • N80/F80 • N80/F80 • N90s

Lenses • 105mm/2.8D AF • 20/2.8 AF • 200 F/2G AF-S VR IF-ED • 20-35mm f/2.8 AF D IF • 24/2.8 AF • 300mm/2.8 AF • 35mm AF f/2D • 60mm/2.8 AF macro • 80-200mm/2.8 AF

Scanners • Coolscan 4000 • Super Coolscan 35mm Film Scanner

Text and pictures copyright 1993-2007 Philip Greenspun. The top left photo was taken with a 20mm lens. The top right photo with a 300/2.8.

Article revised December 2008.


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