Help for those of us with adapters
 

When looking at Nikon lenses on ebay, I noticed some descriptions said, "Non AI'd." What exactly does this mean? Is this a bad thing? Will it not work with our adapters?

Maybe this will help you.

http://www.nikonlinks.com/unklbil/nomenclature.htm

Non-AI lenses were made for use on the earlier Nikon F and F2 cameras.

Nikon lenses used to have to use a prong to hook up with the metering prism on the F and F2. Problem was, once attached to the cam, you could not see the F stop in the viewfinder and you had to set the lens for F/16 (I think that's right) prior to installing the lens on the cam.

The AI series lenses did not require that you index it at F/16 first, just go ahead and put it on. You could also see the F Stop in the viewfinder of certain F2 cameras when using AI (Auto Indexing) lenses.
that was HUGE back then (early '70's, I beleive).

You will often see lenses identified as being AI'd. These are non-AI lenses that have been modified, hopefully by the factory. Cost to do this was $35/lens, I believe.

Be sure you check for fungus, etc when looking at lenses that old. Otherwise optically they're great.

I have all non-AI lenses, the slow but sharp ones. I checked with one of the adapter manufacturers some time back and was told they are fine. That was Redrock, and it was over 2 years ago.

The older Nikkor lenses (and possibly some newer ones) usually came in two varieties, the cheaper but significantly faster ones and the more expensive slower ones that were sharper. I always went for the sharper ones, which was great for still photography but probably not so good for this application, because of the light loss from the adapter itself.

Bill, are you sure about that? It's been my experience that faster lenses were more expensive.

Thanks