Accidental Z7ii and 24-200mm Tests.

These are real life tests made by yours truly last week - all for your benefit. :D

 

Durability test:

Methodology: Mounted 24-200mm superzoom lens on Nikon Z7ii camera. Took lens cap off. On a Windjammer Atlantic cruise, placed camera + lens combo close to the edge of the upper cabin bed that was about 5' off of the floor. Let the camera and lens combo fall with a loud noise onto the wood floor which was reinforced with a steel hull. The drop was loud enough to alarm people from the next cabin to yell: "Are you all right"?

 

Picked up camera combo to visually examine for damages.

Result: Zero visual damage

 

Tested usability with normal photography procedure.

Result: Everything worked normally as before.

 

Verdict: Excellent! 5 Stars.

 

Memory-card test:

Methodology: CF Express card was pulled out of the camera and was not replaced. Continued to take photos. Later, be alarmed when discovering that the CF card slot was empty. Make a sigh of relief after seeing the SD card slot happened to be occupied.

 

Test card integrity by checking for all the images that one remembered shooting.

 

Verdict: Excellent! Thank goodness for dual card slots.

Thank you for your selfless testing! Most noble and glad it has a happy ending. Did you see how it landed?

 

I'm still surprised that there is still the menu option to allow or deny shutter release with an empty card slot (or two)

 

Does anyone actually dry-fire their cameras?

Does anyone actually dry-fire their cameras?

 

I'm sure that people who test cameras in stores sometimes do. And occasionally I want to apply and test some settings before going on a shoot and haven't inserted a memory card yet.

Ah, OK. I get the first one.

 

Never thought of the second, but I'd never risk allowing shutter release when empty.

 

That's just asking for trouble....:eek:

 

Far too risky.....:)

Back in 2014, my wife and I were on a cruise to the sub-Antarctic island in New Zealand. That part of the southern ocean is really rough, even worse than the well known Drake Passage south of Argentina. Our cabin had bunkbeds. One evening, I unwisely left a 18-35mm zoom on the top bunk and went to dinner. After dinner, I found that lens on the floor. Fortunately, the thin carpet apparently absorbed the impact and there was no damage at all.

 

I would check the entire zoom mechanism and manual focus mechanism to make sure that there is indeed no damage.

 

The "Slot Empty Release Lock" setting determines whether you can fire the shutter without memory cards inside the camera. On my D750, it is in Custom Settings f7. I just noticed that on newer bodies, Nikon has moved that to the Setup Menu, on my D850 and Z6 ii. I would set it up so that you cannot accidentally fire the shutter without memory cards. I have a friend who thought she had taken a bunch of important pictures but in fact there was no card inside her D7000.

When you dry fire can it di damage to the camera?

When you dry fire can it di damage to the camera?

Why? Shouldn’t make any difference, except the images are not recorded onto any memory cards.

When you dry fire can it di damage to the camera?

Dry fire damages only rimfires or a very, very poorly designed centerfires. ;)

Edited July 10, 2021 by bgelfand

When you dry fire can it di damage to the camera?

Unlike firearms, I don't think so.....:)

 

Pretty sure you don't get a build-up of image electrons.....:p

I didnt think so but when the question was asked if anyone dry fired their camera, I was thinking is there something I dont know, lol

My settings are that I cannot fire without a memory card inserted.

However, if my memory serves me right, I think I years ago read, that you could dry fire some cameras until the buffer was full. I have never tried, but based on above comments, that may just have been a story.

AFAIK, there's no way to dump the buffer to a card....:(

 

Which seems odd, but surely easy enough to implement?

 

But what do I know....;)

20 years ago with my F80 I'd always get happy when I got an extra frame or two on the nominally 36 exposure roll of film, but once on a trip when I got to 40 frames and the camera still wouldn't rewind, my smile faded, since I realized I had been shooting without film in the camera the whole time.

when I got to 40 frames and the camera still wouldn't rewind, my smile faded, since I realized I had been shooting without film in the camera the whole time.

I'd reckon every film user here on the nikon forum has done this before.

 

I certainly have, twice in 35 years......:eek:

 

Bulk loading film could get you to 40 frames, but any more than that and you're in trouble.....:(

Don’t recall that I have ever forgotten to load film. From early on, I learned to tighten the rewind crank and make sure the crank rotates when I advance the film.

 

But I have forgotten to rewind before I open the back to reload :eek: I have done that 2, 3 times over the years.

I certainly have, twice in 35 years......:eek:

I should clarify, mine were misloads ie sprocket alignment failure rather than forgetting to load a film.

 

The second time was with a jammed bulkload cassette where I'd ripped the sprocket holes by using too much force on the winder. I wasn't surprised when I passed 38, but it all went wrong after 40......:oops:

20 years ago with my F80 I'd always get happy when I got an extra frame or two on the nominally 36 exposure roll of film, but once on a trip when I got to 40 frames and the camera still wouldn't rewind, my smile faded, since I realized I had been shooting without film in the camera the whole time.

 

In 2000, on a trip to Europe with my Significant Other, I was using my FTn and shooting color film. I usually got 37 maybe 38 frames per roll. I knew there was something wrong when I advanced the film to frame 39. The FTn has a removable flash mount that fits over the rewind crank hiding the crank. I removed the bracket and rewound the film - a very, very short process. Oops! I had misloaded the film. All my images - the Changing of the Guard, the Parade of the Horse Guards, Number 10 Downing Street and the Bobbie in front of it, the Dropping of the Ball at Greenwich, the Old Bailey - all were on frame #1. It was the first time in over 20-years I had misloaded the FTN. I certainly picked a great time to do it; Murphy was alive and well. :(

 

Luckily my Significant Other was shooting her Olympus point and shoot and got most of the scenes.

I'd reckon every film user here on the nikon forum has done this before.

 

I certainly have, twice in 35 years......:eek:

 

 

Well, no.

There's that little trick, of watching the rewind knob.

 

Some people wondered where those fog lines around sprocket holes came from. Those were the result of too often and too much checking whether there is film in the camera by feeling tension on the rewind knob.

There's that little trick, of watching the rewind knob.

Information you were born with no doubt.....?

 

Or maybe someone told you?

 

Lucky you.

Information you were born with no doubt.....?

 

Or maybe someone told you?

 

Lucky you.

Well, Mike. I see that Shun, on the other side of the world from where i am, also knew about this. I bet that we were not the only two. So when did you not pay attention?

 

And yes, you could have figured it out yourself. All you needed to do to do that is use a camera and notice how it works.

I'm still surprised that there is still the menu option to allow or deny shutter release with an empty card slot (or two)

 

Does anyone actually dry-fire their cameras?

Sorry, I forgot who among Canon and Nikon supports tethered shooting with empty card slots. It seems a handy feature for assembly line style studio shooters. (But I never got deep enough into that field, to try it myself.)

So when did you not pay attention?

This is the same person who couldn't remember liking one of my better Nikon Wednesday pictures?

 

Good to see learning and memory are two of your least bad qualities.

 

My first failure was after 3 weeks with my 1st film slr, a veritable Pentax K1000. The ripped sprockets was a Pentax LX about 9 months after... so good for, err, 33 years or so. Not such a bad record really.

 

Not as good as you, obviously, I mean, how could i be?...., but hey, who cares. I most certainly don't.

 

PS. I'm not sure why Shun's location has anything to do with this? Some sort of geo film loading knowledge? Bizarre.

tethered shooting

AFAIK, you cannot have the 'record to nowhere' option in Nikon tethering.... I might have to check...:)

 

There are all sorts of options.... card only, external HDD/network only, card and HDD/network, HDD/network only... but i'm pretty sure NON is not an option.

Information you were born with no doubt.....?

Or maybe someone told you? Lucky you.

Hmm, those ancient days are faint memories. But I do remember tightening the film and making sure the knob turned when advancing each frame because that was an important concern to me.

 

But there were stupid things such as opening the back at one time when the film was not completely rewound (can't remember what happened) and one time every single one of my "pristine macro butterfly shot with a clean background" had something like a hair at the background. Came to find out that there was a piece of debris stuck to the pressure plate. It was frustrating because those were good shots. In these digital days one would just take that eyesore out in Photoshop as "sensor dirt".

I'm guessing with the much shorter flange distance, anything like a spider web or cat-hair on the lens back register is more sharply defined?

 

....and, yes! Once you've experienced a misload, you can watch for the winder to spin although depending on how tightly wound it is, it sometimes doesn't move for the first two 'fire-and-winds' needed to advance to the first frame.

 

I always thought those power winder cameras that wound the entire film role onto the takeup spindle first were a good idea. Every time a shot is taken it's wound back into the cassette for safety, but I guess the frame numbers are backwards.