D3400 lens question

kskiles

New member
Newbie here. Trying to get back into photography and thinking of starting with a D3400. I will be stepping up from an N65 SLR and I have several lenses I would like to use versus purchasing new.

I have done some checking and believe I can use the following group of lens on the D3400 but I have seen some conflicting information.

Nikon AF Nikkor 28-80mm. This is the lens that came with the N65 when I purchased it.

Nikon AF Nikkor 70-300mm.

Quantaray for Nikon AF 24mm
wide-angleMy questions is if I can use the above lenses on the D3400 body?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Ken
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
Newbie here. Trying to get back into photography and thinking of starting with a D3400. I will be stepping up from an N65 SLR and I have several lenses I would like to use versus purchasing new.

I have done some checking and believe I can use the following group of lens on the D3400 but I have seen some conflicting information.

Nikon AF Nikkor 28-80mm. This is the lens that came with the N65 when I purchased it.

Nikon AF Nikkor 70-300mm.

Quantaray for Nikon AF 24mm
wide-angleMy questions is if I can use the above lenses on the D3400 body?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Ken
Your N65 and D3400 both use Nikon's F-mount so the above lenses will all mount to your D3400. That doesn't necessarily mean you'll have full functionality with all features such as autofocus, metering etc. Most likely all of those lenses will meter just fine on your D 3400, but autofocus is another matter since the D 3400 does not have an internal autofocus motor.
 
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Bikerbrent

Senior Member
Welcome aboard. Enjoy the ride.
We look forward to seeing more posts and samples of your work.

These lenses are not AF-S and do not have a builtin focus motor, so you will only be able to use them in manual focus mode on a D3400. You might want to read this article,

https://www.nikonimgsupport.com/ni/NI_article?lang=en_US&articleNo=000002638

about using older lenses on newer cameras. To get a somewhat current DX camera that will allow autofocusing, you will need something in the D7XXX range or a D500. Otherwise you will need an FX camera. Also keep in mind the crop factor of a DX camera which means you will have a maximum wide angle of only 36mm using your 24mm lens. But, on the plus side your 70-300mm lens will get you out to 450mm.
 
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lokatz

Senior Member
Hi Ken, Since you said you're looking to 'get back' into photography, I assume you may not be that familiar with the digital nomenclature, so let me add a few explanations that might make the feedback you got so far easier to understand:

Your N65 was what is referred to as a full-frame camera for standard 36x24mm film. Nikon calls this FX. In the digital world, there are many FX cameras that have sensors of the same size, 36x24mm. There is also a smaller variant called DX with a size of 24x18mm. The D3400 is a DX camera, so it has that smaller sensor. Because of the smaller sensor, the effective focal length of lenses gets extended by a factor of 1.5x on these cameras, so your old lenses now effectively work as 42-120mm and 105mm-450mm ones on the D3400.

As others have pointed out, all of your old lenses will only work with manual focus on the D3400, with autofocus not possible. If that's fine for you, keep your old lenses and be happy with them. Otherwise, I suggest to consider buying something like Sigma's 18-200mm lens, which means the equivalent of 27-300mm in the FX world and thus gives you almost the same range you had in the past, except that you now need only one lens instead of two.
 

hark

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
Contributor
As the others have mentioned, your current lenses won't auto focus on the D3xxx bodies, and they won't AF on the D5xxx bodies either. If you want those lenses to AF on a Nikon DSLR, then you'd be looking at the D7xxx series or FX bodies (or some older DSLR's such as the D90 and possibly others). Welcome to the forum. :)
 
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