I am going to the Buena Park Camera Expo this Sunday to purchase a portrait lens, Nikon 105mm, for my Nikon N70. I was told that for portraits I should stick with a manual focus lens. Is this the case? How about the manual override on an autofocus lens, does it work the same as a strict manual focus lens? And how important is it to purchase a "D" lens for my N70? Nikon seems to think that the "D" makes a lot of difference. Thank you in advance to anyone who can help me with this decision.

-- Brandon Acker (blueplanet@mailcity.com), April 17, 1998

Answers

The advantage of a manual-focus lens is that YOU choose what to focus on. For portraits, this is often the eyes. Automatic-focus will tend instead to focus on whatever is in the centre of the frame. Depth of field might take care of this, or it might not.

Yes, you can usually turn the autofocus off and do it manually. However, there is usually less rotation from end-to-end focusing, so manual focusing of an automatic lens is less precise than for a manual lens.

For studio portraits, automatic focusing is pointless. For candids, is can be very useful.

D-types? I don't know. I do use a 105/2.5, old manual lens, very nice.

-- Alan Gibson (gibson.al@mail.dec.com), April 17, 1998.

Automatic vs. Manual focus Lenses

D-Type lens from Nikon is a modern and new type of lens that with it you can shoot with flash at 1/1000 sec.

-- Mauricio Maurinck Falcao (mmfalcao@convoy.com.br), April 23, 1998.