I don’t own a single modern autofocus lense. For the last four years or so, I’ve been shooting manual, vintage lenses exclusively and I’ve done it all - weddings, product photography, street and astro, landscape and macro.
In this video I talk about the reasons for this and my experience with shooting these 40-70 year old lenses.
I hope you like it.
I really like your videos and the way you “ramble” (your term, not mine 
). I think I said it before: Honest and from the heart.
I’m not actively looking for old/vintage lenses but I am open to getting them if I run into them now. This is basically due to your videos.
I suppose the real answer is, “Try it and see,” but would my old Nikkor AIs prime lenses work on my D3300 DSLR body?
I have all vintage manual focus lenses except one, a Tamron 45/1.8 that I bought for weather sealing (and still use manually focused).
I love watching images snap into focus on a ground glass screen.
I love never having to blame my equipment for focus failure—it’s all on me to improve.
I love being able to get cheap lenses, like my Tamron 400/4 (I’d never be able to justify the price of the Canon).
I love the smooth rendering of my classic Zeiss stuff.
I like being completely free of GAS for modern mirrorless lenses (I hate electronic manual focus).
I like the fact that I’m not tied to any camera system (though I do only use one brand of camera).
I think it should work but only in manual mode. It wouldn’t support aperture priority like a higher end Nikon DSLR or any mirrorless would. Probably no light metering either, would have to guess at the exposure.
Thanks. I knew it would have to be manual settings, but I didn’t think about it not telling me the exposure info.
I use old glas because it’s cheap - and can be very good. But my Canon FD 17mm will retire after I got the Samyang 18mm. I don’t care much about AF, but the plastic and use without adapter saves lots of weight. Price is similar, the Samyang was $299 or so.
Similar for Canon FD 80-200mm L (= legendary). A very good lens, but hardly fits in my bag. This one has been retired in favor of the Tamron 28-200mm, an excellent sharp and compact lens.
I still shot manual a lot though.
I laughed so hard after your first short explanation. =)
And while part of my work is being made a lot easier by modern AF lenses (mountainbikers and other sports), I still like some of my old glass. The MIR 35/f2 comes to mind. Or CCTV lenses on µ43…
PS: if anyone wants to get rid of the mother-of-all-bad-zooms, the very first generation Nikkor 43-86mm/f3.5 … I am here to help you. The later generations do have a lot of character but that is nothing to the one lens that single-handedly gave zooms a bad reputation in a time when zooms were not really a thing.
I have a Gen.2 version, which is optically bad (in a good way), but already has improved coating over the Gen.1.
The Gen.3 which works without modifications on modern Nikon F cameras is quite decent while still showing its heritage.
I fully understand there are some situations where AF is almost obligatory. You mentioned sports, there is also wildlife, fast-moving subjects like children and pets. Also weddings, while doable, they’re not particularly fun with manual-only lenses.
It works. Even pre-Ai lenses work, unlike on the higher bodies where the different design of the aperture ring will destroy the camera.
As paolo said, no auto-exposure or even metering.
But the focus-assist works, which can be quite helpful since the groundglass in AF DSLRs is NOT designed for manual focus.
I use vintage and new lenses. Undoubtedly the vintage ones bring a look to them. They are also, generally speaking, sharp in the center. My vintage lenses are mainly Pentax which have inclredibly smooth focus action and a nice elegant look to the files.
I have noticed however that shadows contain less information. Not much of an issue but an interesting curiosity. If you ettr a high contrast scene and attempt to recover shadows there’s not as much there as with more recent pentax glass. Just sort of flat. But the slightly lower contrast also makes managing high dynamic range easier.
Interesting observation.
Obviously, there will always be trade-offs. Manual lenses are probably sturdier and so heavier.
Sorry I haven’t time to watch your video or follow your vlog. Something on the long to-do list. 
I love vintage lenses too (reasons given above in this thread). Some technical remarks: a vintage lense is always in aperture priority (see @paolod above) as your camera is not able to control the aperture. So you set aperture on the lens and that’s it. The camera now controls shutter speed and (and this did not exist with analog cameras) ISO - if you allow it to do. So my standard setting is some reasonable range for auto ISO (which I know the camera can handle): this gives me the freedom to select shutter speed (camera) and aperture (lens) and still some flexibilty to get the right exposure.
Most of the images found here are shot using vintage lenses.
Additional remark: for video (with fixed camera) I think vintage/manual lenses are clear preferable: no wrong/nervous/jumping focus, a deliberate selected depth of field and - don’t know why - a greate cineastic look.
I agree entirely.