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FM3A lens, for my special needs

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September 14, 2005

I'll say, you missed most of the autofocus era, and the digital revolution. No matter, the FM3a will make you feel right at home. May want to read up a bit on latest developments in photography before making your purchases.

The FM3a is a manual focus camera only, so you might as well purchase Nikkor manual focus (MF) lenses (AI or AIS mount) secondhand and enjoy the better build quality and cost savings over newer autofocus (AF) lenses. If you're doing a lot of macro (closeup) or landscape work you won't find much use for AF anyway.

For closeups you'll want a good quality macro lens. Some recommendations are the 105mm/2.8 Nikon Macro Nikkor, 200mm/4 Macro Nikkor, and the 105mm/2.8 Kiron. Very, very good lenses. I normally prefer Nikkor (Nikon) lenses to third party alternatives, but that Kiron is a sharp lens.

Distant shots (wildlife) are normally made with telephoto lenses of anything from 150-800mm or more. (Zooms only change focal length, they may or may not be telephoto). Since these tend to be expensive, my advice is to peruse bjorn rorsletts site ( www.naturfotograf.com/ ) before buying anything, to learn more about the better nikon telephoto lenses.
Get a good book on macro photography and one of John Shaw's wildlife photography how-to books from the library as well, and you'll start learning fast.

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September 14, 2005