In article <312A4F1A.7401@earthlink.net>, dougs@earthlink.net says...
(most, about 8mm f2.8 Nikkor, deleted)

>Additionally, if anyone is familiar with the use of this lens in a
>tight environment, a la the interior of an automobile (say a
>shooting position at the top of the front seat) and how well this
>would capture the dashboard components, that would also be of help.

As other posters have said, the lens is available in MF mount (AF
for wide-angles has always seemed a little strange to me....,
especially since scale focusing is so accurate if GG focusing is difficult to do.), but may not be the best choice for what you
want to shoot (the "active" image area [one inch in diameter] is
mighty small, as are even closely-photographed details). The 16mm
f3.5 Nikkor (available used only) would be my first choice, if
sharpness at wide apertures (with very wide coverage) is a
consideration (it is good all-over wide-open). If you go with the
8mm Nikkor, it is really excellent to the edge of coverage by f11,
but the wide-aperture performance does not satisfy me. The Sigma
8mm may be a good alternative, since it is reasonably good wide-open (though the Nikkor 8 is ultimately a bit better in color, and very noticeably better in B&W). BTW, with most fisheyes, I find a there is slight error in the scale focusing (it is hard with such short focal-lengths to get the infinity-focus just right, so they often
focus beyond infinity) - you can mentally move the focus marker to
the correct position on the lens, once you have established where it should be. 1.4x converters can be used with fisheyes to produce other
useful focal-lengths (the TC14A is really excellent on both the 16mm
f3.5 and f2.8 by f5.6, and makes a nice people-kind super-wide; and
the TC14A on the 8mm still gives a 180 degree horizontal angle of coverage, while giving larger image details - though f11 is necessary
for optimum sharpness [f16 true]).
Hope This Helps