I Finally Found The Limit On How Many Nikkor AIS Lenses I Can Own

Sirius Glass

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The OP must buy more AIS lenses to keep to market going. If he does not, we are headed for a business slowdown!
 

Chan Tran

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But among your 50mm you must have more than one with the same maximum aperture and in that case you can use the same lens number for them.
 
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chuckroast

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But among your 50mm you must have more than one with the same maximum aperture and in that case you can use the same lens number for them.

That's a point well made, HOWEVER, there is no way of telling just which of them was used. Clearly Nikon needs to make provision for serial numbers ...
 

Chan Tran

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That's a point well made, HOWEVER, there is no way of telling just which of them was used. Clearly Nikon needs to make provision for serial numbers ...

I don't care about that. I don't care for the record keeping functions. EXIF etc... date, time, location etc... I only need the maximum aperture enter so the matrix metering works correctly and the aperture display in the viewfinder. The focal length is for when the camera needs to determine hand holding limit (like in auto ISO and A mode).
 
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chuckroast

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Yep, right there with you. But I was referring to @BradS collection of many similar lenses where knowning which one used would be helpful.
 

BradS

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But among your 50mm you must have more than one with the same maximum aperture and in that case you can use the same lens number for them.

Yep, right there with you. But I was referring to @BradS collection of many similar lenses where knowning which one used would be helpful.

I only fairly recently bought my first digital camera - a Nikon Z6ii mirror-less. I skipped the DSLR era completely. Anyway, I do have an inexpensive, third party F-mount to Z-mount lens adapter and have used it to test a few lenses. However, I really do not enjoy the experience (of manual focus on the digital camera). As suggested, what I have done, is use a handful of slots in the lens info table to record basic focal length and max aperture and then add more details in the image comments tag....because, yeah, I wanna know exactly what lens made this image and what aperture was used. Incidentally, some of these film camera Nikkor, and Asahi-Pentax screw mount lenses are quite surprising on digital, usually in a very good way but it's just such a pain-in-the-ass that I only adapt manual focus lenses for testing.
 

Chan Tran

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But the purpose of lens data isn't for record keeping but to allow the camera metering system to work correctly.
 
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chuckroast

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But the purpose of lens data isn't for record keeping but to allow the camera metering system to work correctly.

It is for that, but is is not just for that. It's also to properly record the lens metadata in the resulting file's EXIF fields to be available subsequently in post or thereafter.

My only point is that if all you can record are focal length and max aperture, AND you have many lenses where both of these are the same, the said EXIF data will be unhelpful if, say, you want to know which specific 50mm f/1.4 lens you used. This would be useful in the OP's stated purpose of doing legacy lens testing on a digibody.

I am soooo happy I work primarily in film and silver
 

BradS

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But the purpose of lens data isn't for record keeping but to allow the camera metering system to work correctly.

Maybe so but the wysiwyg nature of the Nikon Z mirrorless cameras make it kinda superfluous. Select manual exposure mode and adjust camera controls until what you see in the viewfinder or on the back screen "looks good". To me, the real value of entering that info is to have it in the EXIF data - it's just another subtle game changer the new technology provides.
 

Chan Tran

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I don't care much about EXIF data. I have the Nikon Secretary for F5 and I use it just to delete the EXIF data not to read it.
 

fstop

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Where do you find the EXIF data on an F3?
 

ic-racer

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Thank you for the info. I do have a F6, but would be nice to try lenses on other modern cameras I have.
 
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