I took an old lens last night — a 50mm 1.8 from an old Nikon — and put it on our D300 body. I don’t know why: the thing didn’t work with our D70, so why would it work with our newer model? Simple: the D300 has an aperture lever, which means I can actually dial in a given aperture and the camera knows which setting I’ve selected and can compensate the exposure accordingly.
The results were shockingly sharp. It’s too bad the thing is virtually impossible to focus with the lens being manual everything and the camera lacking a focusing plane.
It’s another reason to love Nikon: a 20+ year lens works with a modern, digital SLR.