My daughter has a D40 and her lens broke so we found a used nikkor 28-70mm Lens. Will this lens work with her camera and if so, are there any settings that we should know about in order to make the lens work?
Thanks!!
Edit, it is an AF lens
We need more information to be sure. Nikon has produced many 28-70 mm zooms, and they are not all the same. If this is just an AF lens, it will mount and meter but will not autofocus. The D40 does not have an autofocus motor in the body and requires an AF-S or AF-I lens for that.
As Cleophus added, if the lens doesn’t have an autofocus motor you will have to do so by hand. But it should mount and work on the camera.
Depending on the age of the lens, it may not meter, either. The D40 has the same basic bayonet as any Nikon, but contacts, levers, cams, etc… may differ.
When we try to attach it she gets a "Lock Lens Aperature ring at minimum aperature, (largest F/-number) "
Thanks y’all
Are you saying you get this error message even though the aperture ring is locked at minimum aperture?
The aperture ring is locked at minimum aperture, yes. It will only lock when turned all the way to the right but it goes as far as standard, as far as I’ve seen in photo tutorials.
Some very old lenses might damage the camera body. Years back, Nikon changed the mount (far enough back it was on film cameras, I think) and offered free modifications to the old lenses for a year or two.
I think it was because of the bracket on the aperture ring used by Nikkormats, not fully fledged Nikons, though all Nikon lenses had the bracket. The centre of the bracket accepted a metal pin only on Nikkormats that sticks out from the light-meter assembly that turns in sync with the aperture ring only if the lens is installed at f 5.6.
The brackets were installed with screws, so if, indeed, that was the only fix required by the newer Nikons, the brackets needed only to be unscrewed. A child could do it. But the lenses may have required more modifications than simply removal of the bracket. It may have included some change in the mount.
It was difficult finding lenses for my Nikkormat, which requires the bracket, because the newer lenses don’t have it and most of the used lenses had had them removed.
At any rate, make sure the lens doesn’t have that bracket on it. It could crunch through any thin plastic or metal that may be in the way, or otherwise damage it.
This Wikipedia pic shows the pin and bracket. (The Nikkormat was Nikomat in Japan.)
This is not a concern on the D40. The part you may be thinking of is called an AI tab, which the D40 does not have and is different from the pin shown in the Nikkormat picture. Here is an example of a AI tab on a D200, http://www.barthworks.com/nikon/photos/d200a.jpg. It is the black tab just above the lens mount. The tab interferes with the back of the aperture ring on a pre-AI lens.
The D40, with regards to physical mounting, can actually accept more lenses than its higher-end counterparts. There is no trouble at all mounting a old non-AI lens, but you will have to focus and meter manually. The only Nikon lenses the D40 cannot mount are the very old and rare 6 mm f/5.6, 7.5 mm f/5.6, and 8 mm f/8 fisheye lenses.
Going back to the OP, if the D40 is not sensing the lens when at minimum aperture (probably f/22 on your lens), check the EE servo post on the lower left side of the lens mount to ensure it is not stuck or damaged. The rear of the aperture ring pushes it down when at minimum aperture to signal the D40 the lens is correctly adjusted.
Thank you for clarifying that. I couldn’t see how a simple bracket would necessitate sending a lens to Nikon, unless it was a misguided PR effort to make a silk purse.
Those lenses and Nikon’s efforts to modify them are so far in the past that some camera stores didn’t know what I was talking about when I was looking for used lenses that still had the bracket, except for one grey beard who assured me the 28 would work properly with my Nikkormat. Of course it didn’t help that I didn’t know the specifics, either.