I bought an old lens ...

Irish Halo

I was down in Brighton at the weekend and picked up a lens in a junk shop which fits my Nikon D80 it was only £12 so wasn't a big gamble but don't know much about using these types of lens on modern cameras. I have played with it a bit and I know the following:
It's an F mount Palinar 28mm f/3-22. My camera can't talk to it (not surprising) so needs to be used in full manual (which I use anyway) and it is manual focus and manual aperture control too (two rings, one to set the maximum f-stop).

TBF I half bought it because it was £12 and looked kind of funky but I thought the motor in my D80 would work the focus but seemingly not.

So if anyone has any more info to offer me on what I bought that'd be good.

Paulw

Maybe it's me, but I don't get your question.

The focusing motor is always on a lens and not on the camera. The camera simply sends a focusing signal to the lens, and then it's up to the lens motor to focus.

Sounds like you bought a nice new toy to play with, and learn about. It's always going to be manual though.

DaireQuinlan

Who knows. There are millions of old off-brand lenses. It could have been made by some firm called Palinar although that's doubtful, more likely its some old tokina or tamron or some other 3rd party manufacturer re-branded. Like Sears cameras and lenses in the states. If it has two aperture rings then it's a pre-set aperture lens. They were designed for cameras without auto-aperture, so that you'd set the pre-set ring to whatever aperture you wanted. You'd then focus and compose with the aperture wide open and use the other ring to quickly stop down just before hitting the shutter button without having to look at the aperture markings on the lens again.
It's also most likely completely manual focus, hence the difficulty your camera is having in trying to AF

DaireQuinlan

Paulw wrote: »

The focusing motor is always on a lens and not on the camera. The camera simply sends a focusing signal to the lens, and then it's up to the lens motor to focus.
.

Most mid-range and up Nikon cameras have a focusing motor in the camera body. Historically all Nikon AF used this motor, only in the last 10 years or so have they introduced motors in the lenses, with AFS. They lagged years behind Canon on this, one of the reasons Canon grabbed almost the entire professional sports market in the 80s and 90s

Ghost Train

On the pentax I have theres a metering button that works with old lenses, ie. sets the shutter speed.

Also has an indicator light to tell you when the shot is in focus.

Maybe the D80 has similar functions

DaireQuinlan

Ghost Train wrote: »

On the pentax I have theres a metering button that works with old lenses, ie. sets the shutter speed.

Also has an indicator light to tell you when the shot is in focus.

Maybe the D80 has similar functions

Nah, Nikon intentionally crippled the mid level bodies so they can't meter with manual lenses unless they've been chipped to appear to be AF lenses. They either did this deliberately to drive sales of their D100/200/300 models (which -can- meter with practically anything stuck in front of them) or because the D80 hasn't the mechanism to detect the aperture set on older lenses and they were trying to avoid confusion.

Heebie

That's not strictly true. On a Pentax.. the motor is in the camera and connects via a small gear in the mount.

Paulw wrote: »

The focusing motor is always on a lens and not on the camera. The camera simply sends a focusing signal to the lens, and then it's up to the lens motor to focus.

Paulw

Heebie wrote: »

That's not strictly true. On a Pentax.. the motor is in the camera and connects via a small gear in the mount.

But, it's not on a Pentax.

DaireQuinlan

Paulw wrote: »

But, it's not on a Pentax.

That's true, it's on a nikon, where the motor is in the camera and connects via a small gear in the mount (in some cases) .

Zillah

Irish Halo wrote: »

I was down in Brighton at the weekend and picked up a lens in a junk shop which fits my Nikon D80 it was only £12 so wasn't a big gamble but don't know much about using these types of lens on modern cameras. I have played with it a bit and I know the following:
It's an F mount Palinar 28mm f/3-22. My camera can't talk to it (not surprising) so needs to be used in full manual (which I use anyway) and it is manual focus and manual aperture control too (two rings, one to set the maximum f-stop).

TBF I half bought it because it was £12 and looked kind of funky but I thought the motor in my D80 would work the focus but seemingly not.

So if anyone has any more info to offer me on what I bought that'd be good.

Don't forget that because the lens is calibrated for film and not a digital sensor your focal length is going to be about 1.5x what it claims, so it's closer to 42mm than 28mm. But for twelve quid you can't really go wrong.

Kintarō Hattori

Much like Paulw I don't quite get what you're asking? It's an old manual lens that mounts your camera. Put it on and take photos. That's the best way to find out what it's capable of.

Quite some time ago I bought an ancient fully manual Tamron macro lens from a fellow boardsie for the princely sum of €10. I didn't know what I was getting but for €10 it was another lens and worth the risk. It turned out to be the best €10 I could ever have spent and I've had a great time taking photos with it and learning how to get the best from it and my camera.


So to sum up. Put it on your camera and go out and take pictures.

pete4130

My D3 has a pin that pops out from the body that goes into a small hole in the lens. this pin has a slotted edge that rotates ad drives the focus function in non AFS lenses.

As far as I'm aware (I could be wrong?) it does this with AFS lenses also and the motor in the AFS works too and incresaes AF speed????

DaireQuinlan

pete4130 wrote: »

My D3 has a pin that pops out from the body that goes into a small hole in the lens. this pin has a slotted edge that rotates ad drives the focus function in non AFS lenses.

As far as I'm aware (I could be wrong?) it does this with AFS lenses also and the motor in the AFS works too and incresaes AF speed????

afs lenses won't have that little hole in the mount with the little slotted circular yoke that mates with that screwdriver on the camera body. Afs lenses are solely electrically driven by the body.
Interestingly enough Nikon experimented first with AF aeons ago with a modified version of the F3 and 3 lenses with motors in the lenses. Then for the F4, their first 'real' AF camera, they'd switched to the screwdriver drive on the mount. The F4 was backwardly compatible with those 3 proto-afs lenses they'd made for the F3 though, and then they used the same contacts when they actually did AFS properly years later. The upshot is that the F4, produced years before nikon started making AFS lenses, is fully compatible with them. Pretty cool, eh ?