Deciphering Lens Acronyms – Nikon Edition

 
 
New lenses all have bunch of acronyms attached to them.
 
Here is a simple guide to the more recent Nikon lenses to understand what these all mean, and to understand if any of this is important:
 

AF: Autofocus
These lenses autofocus with autofocus capable Nikon bodies that have an internal autofocus motor.
 
AF-S: Autofocus with silent wave motor
These lenses have an internal motor that does the autofocus. This enables AF-S lenses to work with bodies without internal autofocus motors such as the Nikon D40, D60 or D3000.
 
VR: Vibration Reduction
These have elements inside the lens that compensate for camera shake and prevent unsharp pictures.
 
ED: Extra low dispersion glass
This is a sort of coating that reduces chromatic aberration. Don’t worry about it too much, if you are reading this site.
 
DX:
These lenses are designed only to work with crop sensor cameras (1.5x). That means that they will not cover the full sensor if used on a full frame camera. This allows lenses to be made smaller, cheaper and lighter because they only have to cover a reduced area.
 
M/A: Manual / Auto
This allows switching from auto to manual focus instantly by moving the focus ring. On lenses which do not have this feature, you should not touch the focus ring when the camera is on autofocus, trying to move the focus ring may damage the autofocus mechanism in this case.
 
What about the ones that I didn’t mention? Well, I think those are beyond the interest of the amateur photographer. To see a more professional and complete explanation of all lens acronyms, have a look at the glossary from Nikon.