Nikon D7000 manual Ingredients of Nikon’s Alphanumeric Soup

354 David Busch’s Nikon D7000 Guide to Digital SLR Photography

different designators to indicate these lenses, such as HSM (for hyper-sonic motor). You’ll have to check with the manufacturer of non-Nikon lenses to see if they are com- patible with the D7000, particularly since some vendors have been gradually introduc- ing revamped versions of their existing lenses with the addition of an internal motor.

Today, in addition to its traditional full-frame lenses, Nikon offers lenses with the DX designation, which is intended for use only on DX-format cameras. While the lens mounting system is the same, DX lenses have a coverage area that fills only the smaller frame, allowing the design of more compact, less-expensive lenses especially for non- full-frame cameras.

Ingredients of Nikon’s Alphanumeric Soup

Nikon has always been fond of appending cryptic letters and descriptors onto the names of its lenses. Some of the first Nikon lenses I purchased had names like 35mm f/2 Auto Nikkor-O, 85mm f/1.8 Auto Nikkor-H, 105mm Auto Nikkor-P, and 200mm f/4 Auto Nikkor-Q. At the time, I didn’t know what the funny letters represented, but I did know that the “Auto” portion of the name meant that, when you pressed the shutter release button, the lens would actually stop down automatically to the aperture you’d selected for the exposure. Don’t laugh. Many lenses required rotating a ring manually after focus- ing and before taking the picture in order to close the lens down to the so-called pre-setaperture.

I actually still own all those lenses, because they work just fine on my Nikon digital camera bodies, including my beloved D7000. And I now know that the funny letters stood for the number of elements in the lens, which was apparently a more important attribute for a photographer to know than it is today. P stood for penta (five elements); H represented hexa (six elements); S stood for septa (seven elements); and so on through octa, nona, and deca (eight, nine, and ten). I’d finally found a use for my high-school Latin, even though Nikon substituted penta for quinta, because Q was already taken by quadra (four elements).

In the years since, Nikon lens nomenclature has become considerably more complex. Even the basic name of the company’s lenses can be a source of confusion. Back when Paul Simon wrote his hit Kodachrome the popular terminology was always a “Nikon camera.” And a “Nikkor lens.” Today, even though Kodachrome itself is no longer with us, Nikkor is officially part of the name of each lens produced by Nikon, with the excep- tion of the company’s “budget” line of 30 years ago, which were called Nikon Lens Series E to differentiate them from all the other “top of the line” lenses. But it’s become more common to informally refer to a Nikon lens without fear of being corrected.

Here’s an alphabetical list of lens terms you’re likely to encounter, either as part of the lens name, or in reference to the lens’s capabilities. Not all of these are used as parts of