D50 & Sigma 70 -300 newbie question

[Shooter1]

Hope someone can help me.

I've just bought the d50 & 18-70m kit lens off this forum

I've also bought a sigma 70 - 300mm APO lens.

My question is (apologies if its really stupid) but when I connect the lens to the camera, I can only take pics when the inner ring (closest to the camera) is set to 22 (the options are 22 16 11 8 5.6 4).

All answers greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Benrudd1]

Hi

With the aperture ring on the lens set to its maximum size the camera is then able to control the size of the aperture internally.

On the nikon dslr's, all lens's with aperture rings have to be set to maximum (highest number) to work

Once this is done you can pick any aperture size you want using the A setting on the camera or let it choose automatically using the auto or P settings

You don't use the aperture ring on the lens at all.

Hope this helps

[Shooter1]

THanks for explaining in simple terms

[ush flynn]

Yep, what he said, but not just on dSLR's, the F series film SLRs need it on 22 also. The ring is there so that the lens is backward compatible with manual focus cameras (which some people might use as backups) Cameras like the F4, F2, FE, FE2, FM etc etc all have a small window at the top of the viewfinder (when your looking through it) which allows you to see those small numbers on the aperture ring while looking at your subject through finder

[tontoshorse]

Originally Posted by Benrudd1

Hi

With the aperture ring on the lens set to its maximum size the camera is then able to control the size of the aperture internally.

On the nikon dslr's, all lens's with aperture rings have to be set to maximum (highest number) to work

Once this is done you can pick any aperture size you want using the A setting on the camera or let it choose automatically using the auto or P settings

You don't use the aperture ring on the lens at all.

Hope this helps

Does this mean that a AF Nikon fit ex SLR will be of for a DSLR ?
I'm looking to buy a 50mm 1.8 but its from an SLR.

Cheers.

[Benrudd1]

Originally Posted by tontoshorse

Does this mean that a AF Nikon fit ex SLR will be of for a DSLR ?
I'm looking to buy a 50mm 1.8 but its from an SLR.

Cheers.

Hi,

Almost all nikon AF lens's will work on the Dslr camera's.

Just the manual focus ones will not meter (except on the d200 and up)

It is simply that as ush flynn said the aperture ring was for use with the manual focus and early af camera's. So you just lock the ring to the highest number (smallest aperture) and let the camera adjust the aperture from there.

If you don't lock (most of the lens's will actually have a little lock to hold them at this number) the ring to the highest number then you will just get an error message from the camera.

You will notice that most of the latest nikon lens's don't have an aperture ring, since nikon changed to the camera controlling the aperture rather than the lens

So to sum up, the nikon AF 50mm 1.8 will work fine with all Nikon Dslr's