Lens Question

[Formatted]

Can anyone make sense of this for me?

http://s994.photobucket.com/albums/af66/kaoquan/group 3/?action=view&current=P1000833.jpg

It has that band with the aperture control unit but, it also has a aperture blade on the bottom. So what controls it? Is that a manual aperture lens?

Thanks

J

 

[Derrel]

It's a Nikon 300mm f/2.8 AF-S telephoto. I own one just like it. It is an autofocusing lens. At the bottom is the aperture control ring. The large set of numbers are the ones the photographer typically sees, while the smaller set of numbers is called the secondary aperture scale or the ADR aperture scale. ADR is Aperture Direct Readout; when the Ai or AUtomatic Aperture Indexing protocol was invented, the NIkons of the era used a small lens and mirror system to actually *reflect* the aperture in use upward and into the viewfinder display area. The very small,tiny numerals on the ADR scale are hard to see in actual use because the prism overhang tends to block them, but the ADR lens can see them easily.

On the "pro" Nikon bodies in the D1,D2,and D3 series, you can, if you wish, adjust the aperture using the aperture ring. Many older Nikon shooters prefer this method of aperture control, which has a few benefits to using the front control wheel on the camera body.

The majority of NIkon users would set the lens to the smallest aperture once, and leave it there, and then input aperture settings on the camera body using the front wheel AKA the sub-command dial. This lens will work on older Nikon bodies, like the FM-FE-FE-2-FM-2-FM3a-F2A-F3: all of those cameras have the small lens and mirror system to use the ADR scale to show the f/stop in use, and on those cameras, the apertures would need to be inputted using the lens-based aperture ring.

 

[Formatted]

Thank you very much!