Nikon dumped aperture rings years ago. So where does that leave the Zf?

Nikon Zf being held in reviewer's hands
(Image credit: Gareth Bevan / Digital Camera World)

Way back in the year 2000 Nikon made a momentous decision. It decided that DSLR lenses no longer needed aperture rings. Advances in electronic lens coupling mean that the lens aperture could instead be controlled by the camera body and that was the best way to do it, and that in turn would make DSLR lenses cheaper, simpler and lighter.

It must have seemed a good idea at the time.

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Rod Lawton
Contributor

Rod is an independent photography journalist and editor, and a long-standing Digital Camera World contributor, having previously worked as DCW's Group Reviews editor. Before that he has been technique editor on N-Photo, Head of Testing for the photography division and Camera Channel editor on TechRadar, as well as contributing to many other publications. He has been writing about photography technique, photo editing and digital cameras since they first appeared, and before that began his career writing about film photography. He has used and reviewed practically every interchangeable lens camera launched in the past 20 years, from entry-level DSLRs to medium format cameras, together with lenses, tripods, gimbals, light meters, camera bags and more. Rod has his own camera gear blog at fotovolo.com but also writes about photo-editing applications and techniques at lifeafterphotoshop.com