Old Nikon 50mm lenses?

Hi, I'm looking at several of the older Nikon/nikkor lenses and I'm not sure which one to get for my D3200. I'm looking at the Nikon 50mm f/1.8 E, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 AI, and the Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 AI. If anybody has any other suggestions, I'm open to hear them, but keep in mind I'm on a budget.

If you want a 50mm lens for your Nikon D3200 get this lens.

http://www.amazon.com/...00005LEN4/

It is manual focus only, but it is a great lens.
Make sure the lens you get is compatible with your camera.
A lot of the old AI lens will not be compatible with your camera.

If you have a bigger budget get this lens:

http://www.amazon.com/...004Y1AYAC/

Have fun!

If you have an actual use that you know of for a prime 50mm lens (do you?), save up your money and get the new 50mm AF-S. It will focus more accurately than attempts to manually focus the lenses that can't autofocus with your camera. If you are trying to take the dramatic eyeball-and-nothing-else-in-focus portraits, the shallow depth of field of the wide aperture will be unforgiving of auto focus error. You also need a tripod to do that well. The wide aperture can give you a fast enough shutter speed indoors to reduce camera shake, but not as fast as you make imagine. Because the depth of field would be so shallow. Any fore and aft swaying will hurt the accuracy of your intended focus placement.

It doesn't matter - all of them fit, but none of them allow your meter to work. Sheesh, there was even a 50mm f2 Helios for the Kiev 19/20 that's Really cheap, if that's the way you want to go.

If you want metering or autofocus, however, you really need the modern 50mm AF-S f1.8 - the f1.4 will fit, but you're paying silly money for the extra half stop.

Your fine entry level D3200 can only auto-focus using Nikkor AF-S lenses.

If you do not mind using the electronic rangefinder in your cameras viewfinder, you can use any of the Nikkor AF legacy lenses and you can use the light meter in your camera.

If you really want to use an older manual focus AI lens, you need a better than entry level dSLR like a D90 or better.

I use five AI manual focus lenses on my Nikon D200, D300 and D3, but any of the entry level D3000 or D5000 series cameras can't meter such lenses.

On a budget, you may want to consider buying a Nikkor AF-S 50 mm f/1.8. You only lose 2/3rds of a stop, so not a big deal just a matter of shooting at ISO 320 instead of 200 to get the same shutter speeds for any given lens aperture.

The E series is about as goot as the normal f1.8 Ai but a lot cheaper because so many were made. I don't see much to gain from a 1.4. Manual focus is difficult enough and at f1.4 your DOF is so shallow the slightest eror will be noticeable.

You may want to take a look here first.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/...s.htm#dslr