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Thom Hogan’s Complete Guide to the Nikon D300
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might have a simpler specification, such as: Nikkor 28mm f/2
AI-S.
AI and AI-S refer to a manual aperture indexing scheme
Nikon used to use to get the lens aperture information to the
camera (all autofocus lenses and lenses labeled AI-P use an
electrical connection to convey this information). Again, see
the article on my Web site for a full list of all these arcane
abbreviations and what they mean.
Lens Compatibility
Now that you know a bit about the naming scheme Nikon
uses with lenses, let’s put that into use.
All Nikon D-type, G-type, AF-I, and AF-S lenses are fully
compatible with the D300 and allow unlimited use of any of
the camera’s features. Most third party lenses currently being
made also tend to fall into this category
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.
Other Nikon lens types, and a few specific lenses, either limit
the features that can be used on the camera or should not be
used at all:
Non-D and Non-G type Nikkor autofocus lenses
• 3D matrix metering is not performed (i.e. distance
information isn’t used in the meter’s decision).
• Dust reference photos can’t be taken.
Nikkor AI-P lenses
• Autofocus is unavailable and the focus confirmation in the
viewfinder only works with lenses with maximum
apertures of f/5.6 or larger.
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Most third party lens makers have to reverse engineer Nikon’s communication
between lens and camera. I’ve seen plenty of small anomalies occur because of this.
For example, the very nice Tamron 18-50mm f/2.8 lens doesn’t supply the correct
distance information to the camera when flash is used, so flash exposures tend to be
a bit off.
