Wonderful morning light at the De Chavez Rookery... old AF 300 f2.8 ED N FTW This screw drive gets new
life with the D500. Love the handling/build and IQ of this glass.
Just got a copy of the older version of this lens. What a hunk of glass. Used it primarily to photograph at the local mounted shooting event this past weekend on the D800.
We get all caught up in the latest and greatest zoom but all generations of the 300/2.8 are marvelous. Mine is the AF-n D version with screwdriver autofocus. Bought it recently from a fellow FM'er for $1,000. I have a closet full of Nikon lenses, some of them costing as much as a nice used car. None of them are optically better than this guy. With a D5 to drive the autofocus I don't see anything lacking in autofocus versus my AF-S lenses.
I wanted a teleconverter for occasional use, and that is a challenge with this lens. The only one who makes a TC for screwdriver lenses is Kenko. I had one of the 7 element converters years ago for film but didn't know if they were up to today's digital requirements. I got a new one, did the AF-tune, and found that yes the Kenko works just great.
The first half of the album is with the Kenko TC. The second half is the bare 300/2.8d. Yes I can find differences if I try but the TC combination does well.
This screw drive gets new
