nhudson

I have a Nikon D300 along with a 18-200mm, 70-300mm, 105mm and a 200-500mm lens. My queston is, if I updrade to a Nikon D600 or D800 do I need to upgrade my lenses as well to take advantage of their full frame sensors?

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

Your 18-200 is a DX lens and will not take full advantage of the full-frame sensor. The others will work with the full frame, the 105 probably the best of the lot. The best full-frame zoom lenses are the "holy grail" 70-200, 24-70 and the 14-24. The 28-300 is the equivalent of the 18-200 with probably better image quality. Just about any of the FF primes would be a good choice. Your choice depends on what you like to shoot. I have an old 50mm 1.4 that is not as sharp as the 24-70: the new, good zooms are amazing!

Image quality with either the D600 of 800 is a quantum leap from the D300 in my opinion. The high-iso quality blew me away when I first used them. I got a D800 and rented the D600 to see how it compared. Hated the button set-up. It was not intuitive like the D300 and 800 I was used to so I got a second 800 for my second shooter. File size management has not been as big a deal as I was afraid of. Shoot more like you are using a medium format and you should be fine. I use Camerabits PhotoMechanic to upload and browse images and it's fast and less glitchy than ACDSee I've been using.

MT Shooter Loc: Montana

As GoofyNewfie has already said, only one lens you have is a DX lens, but either the D600 or D800 will accept that lens and simply switch to DX mode when it is mounted. If you would add a 24-70mm F2.8 to what you already have, you would have your current range of lenses covered again in full frame.

MtnMan Loc: ID

Don't give up on your 18-200. As others have noted you can use it in DX mode and if you wish set the camera to auto-detect DX and switch to that frame size.

But you should try it in FX mode. I predict you'll get little or no vignette if you use it from about 28 mm up. I use my 10-24 on my D800 and get no vignette above about 18mm.

JPL

Yes, you have to upgrade your lenses if you switch to full frame. There is no point in full frame cameras for you if you do not upgrade your lenses. Buying a full frame camera and use it in DX mode only to be able to use your old lenses is waste of money. So you should upgrade your 18-200. If you want to keep your DX lenses you should rather upgrade to D7100.

nhudson

Thanks for the help. It was very useful.

Bruce with a Canon Loc: Islip

do yourself a H U G E favor listen to the advice of Goofy and MT Shooter, they are wise and insightful, They will lead you in the right direction.
You simply can not fail listening to the advice of the wise.
( and I am a Canon shooter, but recognize wisdom when I see it)

JPL

Glad to help. But remember that only your 18-200 is DX lens. The others are full frame. Generally speaking it is ok to use full frame lenses for full frame cameras and DX cameras but not to use DX lenses with full frame cameras. You can do it in DX mode but it makes no sense as you are only able to use part of the sensor with proper results.

MtnMan Loc: ID

Just to clarify, for the D800 anyway, it will switch to DX mode automatically if you have it set to do so.

If you don't set it to 'auto' you can take control of what image area you want to use. I have set my function button to bring up the image area dialog because I like to control it.

For example even though my Sigma 150-500 is an FX lens I often use it in DX mode when shooting wildlife because I know I'm going to crop at least that much anyway. Also I have used my 10-24mm (a DX lens) in FX mode...it works fine with no vignette above about 18mm. It would go even lower without vignette with the 1.2 crop. It also shows little vignette at the 8x10 (5:4) format.

Once again you should try it before you make a final choice.

profpb Loc: Venice, Florida

Correction: The Nikkor 28-300 is NOT the equivalent of the 18-200. It is already full-frame at 28-300 and works great on my D800e and 42-450mm on my D7000.

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

Ok, ok. The approximate full-frame equivalent of using a 18-200 on a DX camera would be 27-300, not 28-300. I missed it by one milimeter! :lol:

Al McPhee Loc: Boston, Massachusetts

I agree, the D800 IS a quantum leap in image quality. I still use my 18-200 on it for some of the newspaper work I do, and the editor has commented on the increased quality in detail, exposure and color. Same lens different camera, surprisingly big difference in quality. You won't go wrong, even with the DX lens mounted.

MtnMan Loc: ID

Some may have seen the unedited version of this post. If so, sorry for the confusion.

I have both the 18-300 and 28-300. I had looked them over and based on what I had tested on the 10-24 thought they were identical except that the 28-300 didn't go to as wide an angle to prevent the vignette, as happens with the 10-24 in FX mode.

It turns out the 18-300 on my D800 in FX mode shows vignetting at both the high and low end. So the internal geometry differs.

So, back to what I recommended before: if you have an old DX lens you have to test it on an FX camera in FX mode to see what it is going to do. In my case my 10-24 works fine in FX above 15mm. But I'm glad I bought the 28-300 because the 18-300 wouldn't have worked...vignetting at both the high and low end.