Chapter 4: Selecting and Using Lenses with the Nikon D600

The lens that you put in front of your D600 sensor has an enormous impact on image quality, especially with the amount of fine detail that high-resolution sensors reveal. The lens affects not only the sharpness of your images but also the contrast and color rendition. A quality lens, such as a professional-level NIKKOR, will likely outlast a number of camera bodies if you take care of it. I have lenses that I’ve used for more than a decade and they still function perfectly.

One of the great things about a dSLR is that the lenses are interchangeable. With interchangeable lenses, you can choose how to show others the world. You can use ultrawide-angle lenses to distort spatial relations, or you can use a macro lens to give a bug’s eye view.

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A high-quality lens is an investment that should last you throughout many dSLR camera bodies.

Lens Compatibility

Nikon has been manufacturing lenses since about 1937 and is known to make some of the highest-quality lenses in the industry. You can use almost every Nikon lens made since about 1977 on your D600, although some lenses will have limited functionality. In 1977, Nikon introduced the Auto Indexing (AI) lens. Auto Indexing allows the aperture diaphragm on the lens to stay wide open until the shutter is released; the diaphragm then closes down to the desired f-stop. This allows ...

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