***I think that a Nikkor lens, used on a Nikon body is a better option than a third-party lens using an adapter - what's wrong with that?***
Nothing wrong with that.........."You can all afford Nikon gear, in this thread" and who cares if the Nikon E 75-150mm was made by Kiron and you can get the Kiron/vivitar equivalent far cheaper.
Quite - assuming you'd even want one in the first place...
I admit there
are better optics out there - the Summicron 35mm f/2 sat on my Leica is simply amazing... Plus I'd
dearly love a Carl Zeiss Distagon 35mm f/2 for my F3, but can I justify spending £750 on a lens for just
one of my cameras? Even though I
can afford it?
No, so I'll 'make do' with the 'inferior' Nikkor AF-D 35mm f/2 with its oily diaphragm blades, as the optics are still pretty good by today's standards...the AI-S 35mm is comparatively pretty poor, so that isn't an option either.
Until I get bored one night and beast the plastic, that is...lol
E-Series lenses and Tokinas, Tamrons, Vivitars et al, well, to me they just feel a bit...
crap... While optically they may be great, I just don't like them - they
feel cheap... mostly because they
were cheap(er) and no matter what, if you don't
like something - no matter how irrational that may be, you'll find an excuse not to use it...
Honestly though, would I even notice the difference? Another factor to enter into the equation when shooting film - is it
worth the additional expense of super-Gucci-glass when user-errors and processing anomalies will swamp whatever advantage the lens has to offer...?
Probably not, but it comes back to what
I like - old scalloped Nikkors are a bit rubbish compared to modern multi-coated optics, but they
feel nice...and that old orange single-coating on some of them -
how gorgeous does that look? I still love the feel of the focussing-ring on my old 105mm f/2.5 and the fact that it's a bit soft at the edges actually makes it
better for portraits - who wants to see all those blackheads anyway?
...and since this is more about getting back into the
fun that film-photography offers rather than striving for excellence for a customer...hey, who
really cares?