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Explanations of Terms Used in the Tables
"OK" means everything works as originally intended. "As intended" means a feature supported by both the camera and by the lens. AF lenses will not autofocus on manual focus cameras, and manual focus lenses won't autofocus on any camera, which is as intended, so that's OK. The invasive fisheyes never had any had metering and never had through-the-lens viewing, so for them, that's also OK.
Newer cameras have more potentially incompatible features than older cameras. A newer camera may have more incompatibility warnings below than an older camera, but may still provide more features than an older camera with an OK. For example, I mark when a matrix-metering camera loses that capability, but older cameras that never had a matrix meter are marked OK since they never had it. For instance, I mark the ancient invasive fisheyes as OK on some cameras, but these lenses offer no through-the-lens viewing, no metering and no focusing. You have to use an external meter and clip-on viewfinder with the first fisheyes of the 1960s!
P, S, A and M refer to Program, Shutter-preferred, Aperture-preferred and Manual exposure modes. On cameras on which a mode is supported by the camera, but not with a lens you've mounted, the camera will default seamlessly back to a mode which is supported. For instance, if Program mode isn't supported, the camera usually defaults to Aperture-preferred mode.
Matrix Metering, introduced in the 1983 FA, is Nikon's magic metering system which gives perfect exposures over many difficult conditions, including pointing directly into the sun. All Nikon's pro cameras have had it since the F4 of 1988, and all digital cameras have it. Only the FA manual focus camera has it, and most of the AF film cameras have it. See my individual camera reviews for details.
VR, Vibration Reduction, is a stand-alone feature. It either works or doesn't on any particular camera, regardless of the compatibility of everything else.
No AF is an inconvenience, but guess what: Nikon AF cameras still all have an electronic dot (or arrows and a dot) in the viewfinder which tell you when you've got perfect manual focus. It's slower, but just as accurate.
P Lenses: Not shown on the chart, P lenses are manual focus lenses with computer chips that enable full compatibility with all AF and digital cameras. You still need to focus by hand, using whatever electronic aids are in the camera, and otherwise they behave just like AF lenses.
G lenses are crippled versions of other lenses. G lenses have had their aperture rings removed to save cost. G is not a feature. G is a handicap. Most cameras haven't needed aperture rings for 20 years. If your camera needs it, you may be out of luck.
A "G" lens means nothing more than a lens without an aperture ring. It's like a blue "handicap" parking pass in the USA: it tells us nothing else about itself other than that it's handicapped. G lenses are either traditional AF or AF-S, and may or may not have VR. You have to read those columns, too. You only get the features that apply in all of the columns that apply to your lens. G takes away, it never adds features.
Used on a camera listed as "NO: underexposure" means that they will seem to work OK, but only shoot at their minimum aperture. You can use these, but will need to recalculate the exposure and shoot at only the smallest aperture, or more adventurous but dangerous, jam something into the spring-loaded stop-down lever in the back of the lens to keep the G lens open to a more practical or full aperture and meter accordingly. This is silly; if you want to shoot G lenses on film and your camera doesn't support it, today you can have your pick of great used cameras for under $100 that work perfectly with them.
Concatenation
Many of these lens designations can apply to the same lens, for instance, a lens could be DX, AF, VR and G all at the same time. Therefore you'll need to check under every designation which applies. For instance, the DX 10.5mm fisheye is both AF and G, and the 18-55mm II is AF-s and G, leaving open more potential avenues of incompatibility.
* VR is a very valuable stand-alone feature. All VR lenses are either traditional AF or AF-S, in which column you'll see how the other features work.
** G is not a feature. G is a handicap. G lenses are lenses which have been crippled by removing their aperture rings to save cost. This is a classic example of taking away features while making customers think they are getting something new. G eliminates many features with older cameras. Since G lens is a crippled version of something else, you must look in the other columns that apply to your lens, probably traditional AF or AF-s. The features that will work are only those present in all relevant columns.
*** Matrix metering with manual focus lenses in the digital SLRs (D2, D3, D200 and D300) expects you to enter the lens focal length and f/stop in the camera's menus. Otherwise all you get is CW and Spot.
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