Pro Cameras and Consumer lenses

A question that seems to come up a lot is can you use consumer quality lenses on pro cameras. Simple answer, maybe. Nikon is probably the best at allowing this and even has a feature built into cameras like the D700 I use to automatically compensate for the DX style lenses. I do not use it. I shot with the DX lens set at a full sensor size and crop out the corners on the lens I use. So you can use them on some camera. I did this shot to show you how you can do a couple of things with the camera to get shots you might not think you can get.

This image was shot at a lake about an hour or less from sunset. It is heavily wooded as you can see. It was heavy overcast so no sunset. That was the reason I went. I was hoping for a nice sunset over the lake. Instead I got a shot of a beaver hut.

The shot was done using the D700 with an 18-70 DX lens. It was shot using ISO of 1600, 1/80th of second, f/5.6. It is handheld. As you can see it is not a great shot for detail as the 1600 ISO will start to create noise that plays havoc with the details. However, you get the shot.
I do not recommend shooting consumer lenses on pro cameras but it can be done and you can get decent shots. Decent shots are great for computer wallpapers and online articles but they do not sell well.

On the Studio 1 Photoshelter site their are a couple of new galleries that might interest some. A few of those shots were done with the same combo as the image used in this article. As any reasonably trained eye can see there is a difference. Just like looking at the difference between a full sensor camera and an APS sensor camera images. You can tell a difference.