I have to take exception to David Johnson's well-meaning advice based on
his experience with five or six third party lenses to reject even trying
any third party lenses. There are lots of third party lenses that can
meet the needs of nikon users, often at a fraction of the cost of nikon's
own lenses.
While I have a lot of nikon glass in 35mm, medium format (bronica S2a),
and large format, I have even more third party lenses as backups and for
exotic lenses (fisheyes, ultrawides, long teles) where nikon costs put
these out of reach of my grad student budget.
In a study of Nikon vs. third party ultrawide
(http://www.smu.edu/~rmonagha/bronwide.html) I discovered that Nikon
lenses were generally three times the cost of equiv. focal length and
aperture ultrawide lenses. For many of us, it is third party lenses in the
exotic focal lengths, or no lens at all!
If you limit yourself to Nikon only lenses, then you are going to miss
out on the many cult classic lenses, the truly wierd third party lenses,
and literally thousands of serviceable third party lenses out there!
(http://www.smu.edu/~rmonagha/third/cult.html, wierd.html and index.html)
* Robert Monaghan POB752182 Dallas Tx 75275-2182 [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* Bronica 6x6 medium format: http://www.smu.edu/~rmonagha/bronica.html site *
* Medium Format Cameras: http://www.smu.edu/~rmonagha/mf/index.html megasite*
* Third Party Lenses Pages: http://www.smu.edu/~rmonagha/third/index.html *
