D600 owners- feedback re AF area please

I would be grateful to hear from any D600 owners whether they feel their shooting has been hampered due to the AF

points being very much centrally-located. Looking at the Flickr D600 group has been a real eye-opener. Images

from this camera seem to have a certain something which non-FX images don't have. As I consider upgrading, I

have, despite my misgivings about Q.C. been drawn to the D600, which is now, I'm happy to say just in-budget in

the next couple of months.

Experiences please.

<p>Stephen, this is a Yes and No answer from me. I do not like the restrictions, but a hampering? Probably not. You can work around it by setting "back button" focusing and uncouple AF from the shutter button to the rear button with a Custom Setting . Then you can use whatever AF point you want to focus, then recompose and trigger the shutter with the shutter button. A lot will depend on your shooting style and what camera body you are coming from. Joe Smith</p>

<p>Stephen, I received my D600 at Thanksgiving time not long after it was released and loved every minute of using it. It is very easy to have people get on a band wagon about any camera that there is. As far as being hampered by the close gathering of the focus points, not at all as I always only use one when using auto but most times I am using manual focus. If there was only one point it would not bother me. It is so easy to move around to grab the place you want it to be.<br />As far as issues with QC I haven't seen any. I have the cleaning equipment for doing the sensor but have not had to use it, not even once. I did think I was close to it but a couple of hard puffs from the Grottos Rocket took care of it. I of course have blown the sensor several times due to dust but most of it I am sure has come from changing a lens in the field, something I have had to do with every camera I have owned. I am sure that at some point I will have to clean it, no big deal at all.<br>

INHO the D600 has proven to be a very strong full frame camera and for the price I would buy again in a New York minute.<br>

Have fun with your images and if you do get the D600 I'll bet you will love it.<br>

phil b<br>

benton, ky</p>

Thanks for the speedy replies. Joseph, I'm not familiar with the backbutton setting but am I right in thinking the AF point would still be one of those used in the 39pt array? Thinking about how I use my current cameras, I tend to use a 3/4 point on my D5100, for off-the-cuff portraits or shooting subjects in-context or hyperfocal length when doing Streetwork, but I really like the touchscreen on the GX1 to quickly go from landscape to portrait depending on what I see coming up. Static objects do I feel, benefit from focussing farther from the centre at times, especially if one is employing a deep field with foreground object. It's really just a question of balancing advantages/drawbacks, but I certainly haven't seen a plethora of posts entitled "Got my D600 and now my pictures all look the same."

Thanks for the speedy replies. Joseph, I'm not familiar with the backbutton setting but am I right in thinking the AF point would still be one of those used in the 39pt array? What about in Liveview? Can one focus anywhere in the frame using Liveview? Thinking about how I use my current cameras, I tend to use a 3/4 point on my D5100, for off-the-cuff portraits or shooting subjects in-context or hyperfocal length when doing Streetwork and quite frequently fnd msyelf on the outer rim of the D5100 AF field. I really like the touchscreen on the GX1 to quickly go from landscape to portrait depending on what I see coming up, but of course, one is taking a HUGE hit in term of IQ for this feature. Static objects do I feel, benefit from focussing farther from the centre at times, especially if one is employing a shallow field with foreground object. It's really just a question of balancing advantages/drawbacks, but I assume (and I hope for my assumptions to be confirmed/annulled) that there will be times when I will have to make allowances for the 39pt array. Visualising the focal points from memory, they do not seem to come up to eye level when making a fully zoomed headshot. Am I right in this?

<p>As far as I am concerned, every Nikon FX DSLR has its AF points too concentrated in the center of the frame, including the D3 family and the D4. In that sense the D600 is a little worse than the other ones since it only has 39 AF points intead of 51, but I think it is not that big a deal.</p>

<p>Today, some people still use the F5 and F6 as if there were some magic from 35mm film. However, those two SLRs only have 5 and 11 AF points, respectively. We survived those film days and I am sure we can live with the D600. Can the D600 be better? Of course it can be, but none of its shortcomings is "fatal."</p>

<p>Concerning the D600's oil/dust issue, as usual, it is greatly exaggerated on the internet and promoted by those bloggers who desperate need traffic on their web sites. If anything, the D800 has a much bigger QC issue related to its AF.</p>

<p>However, since even the $1200 D7100 has the 51-point AF that beats the AF on the D3 family, I expect Nikon will eventually upgrade the D600 to the better 51-point Multi-CAM 3500 AF module.</p>

<p>A complete lack of AF points also does not hamper... and that's not trying to be funny, but just for your consideration that for many styles of photography, AF is not a must and manual can work just fine. With AF-S lenses, that choice becomes even easier as you can always instantly switch to manual. One of the main advantages of the FX DSLRs is their much larger viewfinders which make MF work doable (unlike most APS-C DSLRs, though the D300/D7x00 are fine). For me, often enough, doing it manual is simply faster than battling AF points that do not fit my idea of the composition or lack low light lack sensitivity (all the outer points).<br>

Of course it depends a lot what kind of your photography you do, but well, I basically use AF only for sports, wildlife and events. The rest goes equally fine by hand. And if it does go wrong, I can at least smack myself over the head, rather than get angry with my gear (which would only fuel NAS and solve nothing).</p>

<p>Coming from a D5100 with its rather dim and small viewfinder, looking through a viewfinder will never be the same again. And well, leaving less to the camera and doing more yourself can add a level of gratification too :-)</p>

TBH, I find I often have no need/find it problematic to look through the finder or consult the LCD. I've tried hard this last year to wean myself off these habits as I got more into streetwork. Of course for something more composed such as the attached image, a better OVF wil be great- it took a lot of faffing about in liveview to get this and the focal plane is still not quite perfect, since the sun was so bright. I also expect my subjects to change if I get the D600- landscapes and still life objects seem dead or too pat taken with either the D5100 or GX1, no matter what I do.<div></div>

These are the sorts of images I tend to take most pride in, almost always from the hip<div></div>

<p>The D600 is terrific. Yes, the AF points are too much in the center, compared to a DX camera, but the AF is much, much better than my last film camera. All cameras, indeed all engineered objects, involve tradeoffs, and this is one I'm willing to accept.</p>

<p>Stephen, this might give you more info on how to set up back button focusing on your D 600. Look in your D 600 manual for Custom Setting for F 4--Assign AE-L/AF-L Button. To have this button focus your AF lenses, select AF-ON. Once set, the <strong>AE-L/AF-L </strong>button initiates autofocus. The shutter release button can not be used to focus. <br>

A good tutorial on back button focusing can be found at John Gerlach’s web site. Here is a link to it.<br>

<a href="http://www.gerlachnaturephoto.com/Articles/Article6.html">http://www.gerlachnaturephoto.com/Articles/Article6.html</a> <br>

It may not be for everyone, but I use it 99% of the time for nature, landscapes and people photography. I rarely ever change then location of the focus point in my viewfinder. What I do is place it on the portion of the image I want in sharp focus, push the AE-l/AF-L button to focus, release it (for static images), recompose the image in the viewfinder and trigger the shutter at the right time. On some other Nikon cameras, there is a dedicated AF-ON button at the rear of the camera right next to the AE-L/AF-L button. For these cameras, you would use the AF-ON button to accomplish the same technique.<br>

And sometimes I just switch to manual focusing as Wouter has described.<br>

Joe Smith</p>

Ah, got it. I can see the logic here, nicely explained in your link, a clever way of utilising the focus and recompose method.

I think with a camera like the D600 one would get used to moving the lens on the same focal plane when recomposing, at close quarters at least- using a long tele or wide-angle set to near-infinity would not present many challenges I'd think. I feel certain that if Shun et al do not consider it something to be concerned about, then it isn't.

Thank you for answering my question.

[Of course, any more comments re the D600 will be gratefully read. :-) ]

<p>Those who complain that 39 AF points are not enough...even 51 AF points, are spoilt.<br>

Why would you need AF anyway for such things like landscapes or portraits? Sports, candids, wildlife, sure.<br>

We geezers shake our heads. The first half of my career I had no AF at all and the later half I was using the one AF point in my F4. It was just so easy and still is when I get a nostalgic mood and shoot some film. Most of the time we used zone pre-focusing anyway. When you only got a chance to see your shots a day or more later did you see the keepers. Machine gun shooting was frowned upon. The photo editors soon told you if you were uneconomical as it wasted their time. You got a bad name quickly and then you were not given the good assignments.<br>

Not long after the D3/D300 came out, there were many threads in forums suggesting that the AF engines in those cameras worked better and faster using only 9 or 21 AF points.<br>

Yes, in the current FX models the AF points are clustered more in the center than the DX models, but if you are any kind of a respectable photographer, its a complete non issue.</p>

<p> </p>

Yeah yeah, we're all amatuers, none of us know what a REAL camera is, we'd never last five minutes on the streets of Florence trying to photograph a riot, we'd get fired the first time we handed in our pictures 30 years ago. So what? I'm sorry to break it to you but things have changed Francisco and I think if you went back in time and gave one of your legendary pressmen a D600 and a good laptop, state of the art printer and a week-long tutorial on how to use it all, they'd think they'd died and gone to Heaven. I believe an ISO of 800 was once considered pretty darn fast too. Look at the movies from only a couple of decades ago and its quite clear they were working with inferior imaging equipment to those used by the big producers of today. The BBC's latest Top Gear programs are worthy of National Geographic....and I believe they've even been known to use a GH3!

If I'm going to spend up to 13,000 RMB of my own money excluding lenses I want to be bloody certain the product is what I want, so if I want it in fuschia pink I'll bloody well buy it in fuschia pink!

Moving on.....

I'm just back from Sundan and they were kind enough to take their display D600 out of the case for me. It had a ludicrously big 16,000 RMB zoom on it, which dwarfed the body, but then changed it to a more reasonable one. I also tried the D7100. The 600 makes my 5100 look and feel like a toy! I know it's not by any means, but there is such a huge leap in build quality and size I have to say it was a little intimidating, especially with that 2 foot-long lens on it!. Interestingly enough, I found the D7100 seemed as well-built as the D600, albeit on a slightly smaller scale. I had a bit of difficulty with the metering, which I think had been stuck on SPOT on the D600, and I couldn't figure out how to change it with the different layout and the menus in Chinese and was so aware of the person hovering beside me, who was responsible for a camera and lens which amounted to about 9 more than a year of their salary that I did silly things like push the ISO up to 2,000 then forget to retract the flash etc, but I got enough of a feel to make a judgement without taking a rise out of them. TBH, moving from the 600 to the 7100 I didn't notice a huge leap in the AF array coverage- certainly not enough to make it an issue. The price? Well that might be another matter- It's 12,680 RMB for the D600 and 9,999 for the D7100 plus kit 18-105, which I understand is not that great, so if I can get the D7100 body only for around 8k, that's a significant enough saving for me to consider going for the DX, although I believe if I did this, I would feel I'd 'settled', which is really not fair on the D7100. I will keep schtum on this until I've made my choice.

Many thanks for the comments and advice!

<p>The D600 has an amazing AF system, I Shoot weddings and have my D600 set up to use only the centre spot using the AE-L / AF-L button on the back of the camera to focus on whatever subject that I decide to focus on. I can then shoot multiple images of the same subject without having to refocus as long as the distance between the subject or the camera dosn't change.</p>

<p>Why do we look down our noses at people who shoot with their DSLR set to Auto or one of the other program modes yet were happy for the camera to decide for us what is important to focus on.</p>

<p>Set your D600 up to use only the single centre point using the AE-L / AF-L button to focus and recompose you will find this is much quicker and easier than trying to move your focus point around to line up with your subject. Off course this all depends on what your shooting.</p>

<p>The D600 is an amazing camera.</p>

<p>I have only just come across this back focus method because there was an update to the Dot Tune Method of fine tuning for Nikon cameras. Engaging the AF-ON gives a more limited set of options for a green solid dot.</p>

<p>I hadn't thought of using this as a permanent feature so this is interesting to me. I too get a little frustrated hunting around with auto focus target so I may change this.</p>

<p>Very basic question here though as I would like to understand it a little more, if the AF is disengaged via the shutter button then what is actually initiating the focus using the AE-L / AF-L button?</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Hi Simon, When the AE-L / AF-L button is set up to focus then as you mentioned the main shutter no longer controls focus. If you have the centre focus point selected and then locked so you don't accidentally move it away from the centre point. Then pointing this focus point to the subject you want to focus on you press the AE-L / AF-L button and the camera will very quickly focus on the subject even in poor light.</p>

<p>If your subject is stationary You can then release the button and your camera will remain focused on this point if both the camera and this point remain at the same distance, allowing you to take multiple shots of your subject without out having to refocus.</p>

<p>Alternatively if you subject is moving, press the AE-L / AF-L button and hold it, your camera will continuously focus based on the centre point.</p>

<p>There has been a previous thread on here discussing this set-up <a href="/nikon-camera-forum/00JBd6">http://www.photo.net/nikon-camera-forum/00JBd6</a></p>

<p>Hope this helps.</p>

<p>Stephen,<br>

With regards to the hipshot/not using viewfinder or liveview... I can see that as an approach (even though I do not mind making it very obvious I am taking a photo - nobody ever slapped me for it yet; and if they object, I won't take the shot), but used like that I doubt a D600 will give better results all that easy - better AF or not.<br>

Raising a viewfinder to your eye more or less forces one to take a steady position; it's forcing a decent handholding technique. Not emplying such techniques, there isn't an AF system in the world that's going to miraculously save the day, in my view. I'm not talking tripod always and everywhere, but simply ensuring you're stabilising yourself. Not only to hold the camera steady, but also to get that split second to consider light and composition. Focus on making the photo, rather than just squeezing a button.</p>

<p>As for the problems you describe in landscapes and still life coming to the D600 - sorry, but most of that comes down to light. Between my D300 and D700, I really can't tell which of the two is better at landscapes or still life. Both landscape and still life first and foremost depend on the right light, and FX does nothing to change that.<br>

Somehow from your replies, I get the idea you expect a bit too much from the D600. Just be sure you have you expectations right - FX has some very compelling advantages, and the D600 seems a magnificent camera. But do not expect it to be leaps better than your D5100 (which has one of the nicest APS-C sensors), nor to work some magic on your photos.</p>

<p>Thanks for the explanation John, I can't really see any reason not to use this method of focusing for the subject matter I shoot. I will take a look at that thread also.</p>

<p>Sorry, I re-read myself (royally late) and realise I might sound more than a bit condenscending... not the intention at all. It's probably a cynical side-effect of too many "upgrade to FF" threads - and as such not as much specifically aimed at the OP, or anyone else in particular, but more against this idea that FF is the holy grail of photography (and having one, I can say, my photos didn't get much better - but some lenses became a lot nicer, like my 35mm f/1.4...).</p>

Hi Wouter- no offense taken in the least. I know I will have to learn how to get the best out of any new body- the GX1 was a long learning experience, strangely- I feel many would-be users give it a bum rap without realising how much potential it has. Mind you, I do want to 'move up' in sensor res. I find with Streetwork, raising the camera to your eye to use the OVF can be the kiss of death, alerting everyone in the area "I'M GOING TO TAKE A PICTURE!". I do at times use the OVF, if appropriate, although close-up and/or in a crowd or queue it's not really advisable if you're trying to get a shot of someone right next to you. I think Street is very misunderstood, even by those who claim to speak for it. I went out this afternoon with my 'humble' D5100 and got a couple of shots.<div></div>

Street using OVF<div></div>

<p>Stephen, for the reason that Street is so misunderstood, I do claim not to shoot any street photography. But well, today, I shot several streetscenes, with a Lensbaby that simply cannot be shot from the hip. I stay calm, people around me stay calm.... it can be done, without making people nervous. But different cultures respond differently, for sure.</p>

You are right that there are many different ways to get shots and everyone does what they can- as long as a photographer is not deliberately annoying people that's ok in my book. There's one guy on PN, whose name I've forgotten, who proudly states that HIS pictures are inviolable and his personal property, no matter what any subject may feel about it, because he has a responsibilty to 'his art'. That's just nasty, exploititive egotism and I am not remotely interested in anything he produces for this very reason. Another "Street Guru" talks about wanting everyone to 'feel his pain'. Adolescent bollox if you ask me. Being a Westerner also doesn't help in the discretion dept and I have on many ocassions put/pointed my camera away when I feel I might be causing offence- it doesn't do to parade around as a privileged, insensitive tosser when you're trying to capture the mood of a working class neighbourhood in Asia. But sometimes a little cheek goes down quite well. :-)<div></div>

<blockquote>

<p>"Concerning the D600's oil/dust issue, as usual, it is greatly exaggerated on the internet and promoted by those bloggers who desperate need traffic on their web sites."</p>

<p>Shun, not sure how you can back up that statement. And I think you have made this same statement a few times. If the problem is reported then it is reported. A camera unit either has a problem or it does not. I really do not think people are reporting oil/dust issues if they are not having these issues. What would be the point? I believe the problem is greatly under reported if anything. Every D600 owner I know, but for one, has had that same issue. The salesman, where I bought My D600, told me that every D600 they had sold, but for a small handfull, has had issues with oil/dust, and they sell a lot of d600s. I see no reason for this salesman to exaggerate a problem about a product they sale a lot of.</p>

<p>I believe this problem to be a design flaw and that Nikon is well aware of what is causing the problem. I believe the problem can not be corrected without a design change, so there is nothing Nikon can really do other than clean the cameras that are sent in and hope for the best. I bet the D600 replacement does not have this problem. This problem was seen in the very first D600s released and are still being seen in new production D600s as we speak. No way a company like Nikon, with the amount of time they have had to look at and research the problem, has yet to figure it out. </p>

<p>Like I said in another post, just because one has a unit with no problems does not mean there is not a problem. I've had a number of cars over the years that were recalled for a wide spread design/safety problem. None of my cars had any issues from this problem. That does not mean there was not a design flaw that needed to be addressed. It just meat I was lucky with which car I bought.</p>

</blockquote>