"Backwards" Nikkor conversion

eyesage said:

I'm not quite sure where you're coming from here Rolfe. The DP-1 was designed to couple via the lens's rabbit-ear prongs. If a lens is properly fitted out with these it will couple exactly as it was designed to regardless of whether the lens is AI or non-AI. I have owned an F2 with DP-1 previously which worked equally well with either type of lens, and I've never heard anyone suggest it should be otherwise. Since the rest of my Nikon bodies are AI a lens that will work with either is ideal for me.

-Joe

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Joe,

I simply meant that the non-AI lenses were the contemporaneous lenses for when the F2 and DP-1 were being sold, and the DP-1 was designed to couple with non-AI lenses.

Obviously, any later lens with a prong will also work.

Rolfe

@Rolfe

Well this I can appreciate, though this isn't something that's ever really bothered me. It doesn't make sense from a financial or practical standpoint to build a separate lens collection for each era spanned by the range of cameras I own so any lens will end up being used with cameras it isn't contemporaneous with. This is actually a reason I've avoided these older optics, as using an AI lens that comes from the factory built to couple with non-AI cameras seems a far more elegant solution than taking a file to a non-AI lens.

Honestly though, given that I plan to dump all of my AF bodies and many lenses, it would be fair to ask why I don't go just a bit further and just have a completely non-AI system? If I was as fond of the pre-AI lenses as I know many are, I'd probably do that. Maybe it's just a psychological thing but the fact is I'm just not. The AI lenses are what I loved using the most back when I first started getting involved in photography in a serious way, and they're what I missed the most when I was fighting AF systems.

-Joe