Lens extensions

[Jojochinoise]

Hello there!,
My name is Jo, I am a newbie here. I have a question about lens on Nikon D40. I will be receiving my new Nikon D40 shortly. I am very excited and can't wait to start taking pictures. I bought it with the lens kit, which is a 55mm. My husband suggest a telephoto lens that attaches to the AF lens. I feel that it may not work since the lens kit works with auto. Will it work or would that be a waist of time and money. From what I understand only lenses made for D40 are specific. Any help here?
Don't want to buy lens that wont work.
Jo
BTW. Thank you for putting up this site, sounds like a great start.

[JohnSR]

Welcome Jo. Don't know if I can answer your question but sure Jon will be able to help you. I thought all Nikon DSLRs used the same lens mount but it could be the D40 is different. I do know the D100/D200?D300 and D3 all use the same mount.

Are you asking about adding an attachment to the present lens to make it into a Telephoto? I know we use attachments for closeups so if that is what you are planning, it may work. Think the best thing is just to take the camera down to a photo shop and see if it works.

[jon.oman]

Hello there!,
My name is Jo, I am a newbie here. I have a question about lens on Nikon D40. I will be receiving my new Nikon D40 shortly. I am very excited and can't wait to start taking pictures. I bought it with the lens kit, which is a 55mm. My husband suggest a telephoto lens that attaches to the AF lens. I feel that it may not work since the lens kit works with auto. Will it work or would that be a waist of time and money. From what I understand only lenses made for D40 are specific. Any help here?
Don't want to buy lens that wont work.
Jo
BTW. Thank you for putting up this site, sounds like a great start.

Welcome Jo!

My understanding is that the D40 does not have a built in motor to drive the focus on the older AF lenses. What you need to do is look at Nikkor AF-S lenses, that have the focus motor in the lens. These will work with the D40.

You have not said how long of a lens you would like to have. That would depend on what you are interested in taking images of. If you would like to take images of birds and animals, the longer the lens, the better.

The best walk-around lens would be something like the Nikkor 18-200 AF-S lens. But, this may be too expensive to start with. You can find this lens at B&H Photo:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/4 ... _AF_S.html

If you already have an 18-55 AF-S lens with the D40 kit, you may want to look at this less expensive Nikkor 55-200 AF-S:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/3 ... _AF_S.html

You could also look at some of the third party lenses. Sigma makes many lenses that will fit your camera. I have heard good things about the Sigma lenses, and I do own the Sigma 180mm f/3.5 APO Macro, that I consider to be excellent. If you do look at the Sigma lenses, you need to find one of their lenses that has HSM built in. This is the same as the Nikkor AF-S lenses.

Here is an example Sigma 55-200 HSM lens:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/5 ... 4_5_6.html

In fact, this Sigma lens may be better in image quality (IQ) than the cheaper Nikkor!

I hope this helps!

[Jojochinoise]

Thank you for all who have answered me.
the lens I am talking about are small round disk with a lens. I would say that it screws on the existing lens. It may fit, but will it work? I don't understand how by just attaching a lens onto the AFS lens would do anything. I hope I am making this clear. These lenses come in a box of three.They are call Bower Digital Macro kit. My husband is always suggesting these things and I am never sure how to decide, because I am afraid of getting the wrong thing and ruin my good lens.
Jo

[jon.oman]

Thank you for all who have answered me.
the lens I am talking about are small round disk with a lens. I would say that it screws on the existing lens. It may fit, but will it work? I don't understand how by just attaching a lens onto the AFS lens would do anything. I hope I am making this clear. These lenses come in a box of three.They are call Bower Digital Macro kit. My husband is always suggesting these things and I am never sure how to decide, because I am afraid of getting the wrong thing and ruin my good lens.
Jo

The light bulb just went on! Yes, you can use a set of these to do close-up photography. Things like flowers or insects. They screw to the front of your existing lens, like a filter would. They are not made for taking images of things that are far away from you. I guess I missunderstood what you were driving at.

These close-up lenses work well when you can not focus close enough to get a large image onto the sensor. But, there is a trade-off. The image quality degrades. Since they are not that expensive, that may not matter to you, if you are going to make limited use of them. If you plan on doing a lot of macro photography (close-ups), you may want to consider a lens that is dedicated to it. You would take off your current lens, and replace it with the macro lens.

Here are a few examples that would work:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/3 ... X_APO.html
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/5 ... EX_DC.html

Here is one that would work, but you would have to manually focus (which is normal for macro work)

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/6 ... focus.html

It all depends on your budget. The set of three close-up lenses should work fine to experiment with, to see if you are interested in this type of photography. Then, you could buy a dedicated macro lens of better quality later.

[jon.oman]

Jo,

Here is an example of using a macro lens (the Nikkor 60mm f/2.8 manual focus):



Here is another one:

[Jojochinoise]

Thank you Jon,
you are very helpful, I really appreciate it. The D40 is my first SLR. I have had point and shoot up to now. Just this week sent my Fujifilm S6000fd to repair. I don't know why but it suddenly started to make grinding noise and when I pushed the shutter it clangs and dings. Sounds I thought were impossible with cameras. The camera takes great pictures but the noise scared me. I was told by the repair office,that it should not make any noise. I hope it comes back in one piece. It is a great looking camera and I took care of it. in the meanwhile the D40 is a new experience for me. I know I am going to enjoy it.
Thanks again.
Jo

[Jojochinoise]

This is great, WOW! what pictures, I love macros. I am always tempted to close in on everything.

[jon.oman]

Jo,

I'm glad that I was able to help!