Nikon SLR Cameras

What is the difference between a Nikon AF lens and a Nikon AF S lens?

walter
walter

What is the difference between a Nikon AF lens and a Nikon AF S lens?

Caoedhen
Caoedhen

AF means autofocus. AF-S means Auto Focus with "silent wave" motor, a fancy name for a focus motor in the lens. The lower end Nikon DSLR bodies do not have a focus motor in the body (D40 on up, except D50) so will only autofocus AF-S lenses. AF-S lenses work equally well on any AF Nikon body.

The AF-S models tend to focus faster and quietly, but not all of them do this.

Minolta did not put the first autofocus camera on the market. Pentax did. Minolta's Maxxum 7000 was the first successful AF camera, but not the 1st to market.

Andrew
Andrew

AF-S lenses have built-in focus motors.

In the beginning, Canon - beating their chests about the then-new annular motors - never developed a motorised body.

Minolta (now Sony, and the first to produce an autofocus SLR), Nikon and Pentax all put the motor into the camera body. While each system has its advantages and disadvantages, it's more a difference of style than of any real substance.

Since then, Pentax and Sony have developed a few motorised lenses (generally when a specific lens needed a more powerful motor, because of increased size and weight) while Nikon removed the body motor from their budget DSLRs to reduce cost.

Any Pentax or Sony AF lens works seamlessly with its respective body, Canon have produced a set of smaller lenses for their cropped-sensor DSLRs (the EF-S lenses - NEVER try to mount one on a full-frame body), and Nikon lenses without motors won't autofocus on the D3xxx, D5xxx and some older models.

You're technically correct, Caoedhhen, the Pentax ME-F (with its single, motorised zoom lens - 35-70mm with motor and three AAA batteries slung underneath) was the first autofocus SLR, and numerous manufacturers followed it.

The Main advantage of the Minolta 7000 was that it was a system camera from the start, and it had a tendency to actually work - something its predecessors only did with static, clearly-defined subjects in bright sunlight.

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