Lens Letter Designations

[Rummel Studios]

I have been a professional photographer for almost 30 years, the first 25 using almost exclusively Hasselblad equipment. Now I am digital using Nikon and Fuji bodies. When looking at lenses I am inundated with letter designations that I am embarsssed to say I don't understand, such as D, DC, DG, G, ED, and DX. Could anyone tell me what they mean. I feel like an idiot, but I'm really not an "equipment guy", I just want to make sure I get the right stuff.

[ChrisPerry]

each manufacturer uses a different nomenclature.
visit their websites for the designations and their definitions.
Google is a wonderful tool

[Bryan_Fletcher]

Here are a couple of links:

Canon EOS lenses, listed by manufacturer

Manufacturer Acronyms

[Chris_Lynch]

I'll take a chance here and wade in on a few of the letter designations with respect to Nikon:

G= A lens with no aperture ring. Will only work with cameras from the F5
film body forward to the current crop of digital bodies.

ED= Extra low dispersion glass on the premium Nikkor lenses. Years ago
the only ED glass was on the big glass telephoto lenses. Now the
premium f2.8 zooms and other quality Nikkor lenses use this
technology.

DX= Relates to the lenses built specifically for the smaller Nikon sized
sensor chip. These lenses will cause vignetting when used with a
full frame camera whether film or digital. The DX lenses are made to
optimize the lens design to the smaller cmos/ccd chip.

D= I think this has to do with the lens having an internal cpu that "talks"
to the camera to provide distance information to help with metering,etc .

Don't quote me on any of this. Someone else may have a complete glossary of designations. The best place to sort this all out is to pick up a Nikon Full Product Line catalog and look at the lens section. All the lenses are described and the "alphabet soup" of letter designators is sorted out. I am too lazy to go looking for the one I have sitting around here.

[Kevin_M_Cox]

Page 4 of this PDF has some of the info you're looking for:
http://www.nikonusa.com/fileuploads/pdfs/Nikkor%20lens%20Broch_061017.pdf

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