On the subject of lenses, I was quit delighted with the ease with which I can use my old manual lenses - some of which are superb. One needs to tell the camera what lens is mounted, shoot in aperture priority - which I do anyway - and they meter just fine. When first mounting the lens, select the "Non CPU Lens Data" item from the menu. A sub-menu shows three ranges so one need not page through dozens of focal lengths. Select the focal length and the widest aperture of the lens you are mounting.
In subsequent uses, when you select the focal length, it will remember the aperture making mounting quick. The Non CPU menu item will also show on the Recent Settings menu, which also cuts mounting time.
I was worried about the focusing screen, since most dSLRS regard the screen just as a viewing screen. There have been many reports of difficulty in focusing manual lenses. There is a third party replacement screen, but so far I have had zero problems focusing the D200. It also has a green LED as an "electronic rangefinder" that glows steadily when the lens is perfectly focused.
My f-2.0 24mm lens produces low contrast. I was never very happy with the lens on film, and it probably sets up reflection feedback between its real element and the sensor. The 28mm PC-Nikkor is an early one and the manual said it should not be used. However, if one enters the f-stop at which one plans to shoot, it works well as a super-sharp semiwide-angle lens. The shift does not work well at all.
All other lenses work fine. The 35mm f-2.0 becomes a very sharp normal lens. It also works perfectly with my Pentax Stereo Photography attachment, doing stereo pairs without vignetting. The 55mm MicroNikkor an 82.5mm macro-capable all around lens. With the fast aperture of the 105mm f-1.8 now functioning as a 157mm lens, it is very easy to isolate a subject from both foreground and background. The 200mm f-2.8 becomes a fast 300mm lens.
I needed a super-telephoto a long time back to compress perspective, filling the whole frame with the signs of Las Vegas for a travel magazine. As luck would have it, Perkin Elmer had set out to create the ultimate 600mm telephoto, which the marketed through Vivitar as a Series I. (Perkin Elmer also built the Hubble Space Telescope.) It is a mirror lens that is almost solid glass, so can not go out of alignment.
I had rarely used it after the assignment, but have been having a blast with it on the D200, where it is now a 900mm in effect. Using the middle of the image circle, the images are amazingly sharp. Of course, a high shutter speed is needed - even off a monopod - and focus is critical.
Finally, I dug to the bottom of the box and came up with a neat lens I bought a very long time ago. It is a soft-focus lens from Spiratone - not sure if they are even still around. It is basically just a 100mm focal-length magnifying glass with every kind of aberration one could imagine, on a simple focusing mount. Works fine and I used it for some informal portraits over the weekend that came out quite nicely. I think it cost all of about $25US at the time I bought it.
So with the reservations above, the manual lenses that have been gathering dust for the past half dozen years are back in service. As top-notch primes, their performance is little short of stunning when it comes to sharpness and detail.
larry!
http://www.larry-bolch.com/