WIFEY SECRETS >I have just purchased a used 300 F4 ED and a TC 14B (my wife doesn't know >yet!). If your wife is from North Carolina you have nothing to fear. If she is from Florida, hide, and be very,very afraid. ;-))) >There is no instruction manual with the TC. Does it make any >difference if I attach the TC to the camera first or to the lens first?Any >specific order to removing them? With the AF stuff Nikon says to turn the camera off before removing or attaching, so the entire compliment must be attached and ready to go before turning the camera back on. Sort of makes me wish pressing the lens release button would cut the power for a second. But with power off, you can attach stuff in any order. I have played around withit here and have had no toruble, but I don't want trouble! ;-) Now it sounds to me like you have manual equipment, so I would say any order suffices. ------------------------------ NEXT AFS LENS >So Nikon is finally adding more AF-S lenses to its lineup. In particular, >the 28-70mm/f2.8 AF-S signals that they are venturing into wide-angle >AF-S lenses. What do people think the next ones will be? > >I am considering getting the 20-35mm/f2.8 D AF-S, but that lens is >already 6 years old. Sorry, but the 20-35 is not AFS, it is AFD. I was hoping for a 28-105/2.8 like the Tamron in AFS. Nikon now has several long AF-S lenses, >followed by the 80-200 zoom and then the 28-70 zoom. The 20-35/2.8 >(or 17-35mm/f2.8) logically seems to be the next one to be upgraded. Don't use logic, otherwise we would have had a 24/1.4 and 35/1.4 by now. --------------------------- PRIME OR ZOOM > This is just an observation, but it seems that many Nikon users veer >toward two or three zooms because of the prices inherent in Nikon gear. That may be a factor but the lens choices out there for primes are really sad. In manual you have three choices of 135mm, the 135/2, 135/2.8 and 135/3.5, whereas in AF you only have the 135/2 DC which costs as much as all the other three combined. The 200mm is only a macro lens, there is nothing in 400mm unless you want to buy the f/2.8 version. Nikon is getting with it in the wider arena (16, 18, 20, 24, 28,25,50, 60, 85) but it ends there. The 105 is high priced according to the manual stuff out there as are all the lenses longer than that, there is still too much plstic in a lot of the lenses (the first 180AF is great optically but it is about as sound, constructionwise, as a Tupperware dish on the Serengeti). We have to buy zooms to get the range that we want. I have the 135/2 but prefer the 80-200 because the 85 and 180 are not that well made. marketing also pushes lenses like the 35-80/4.5-5.6 as the lenses to have, just use 400 or 800 film. Todays new shooters never knew the days when 2.8 was considered a slow aperture speed, and f/2 was finally showing some speed. Today's zooms can indeed compete with the prime lenses of ten years ago, that is probably the biggest factor. > It also seems that for many on the list, buying the newest and >"coolest" is close to being a religion. Halleluia and pass the lenscaps! Sometimes the newest and coolest are really the "well it's about time" 's. Robert in Redlands
