D300 + SB800 = Crap

[danielleetaylor]

<P><i>I just sold my 5D so I could get better flash results from Nikon as I heard they were far superior when in comes to flash. It turns out they were right. Canon flash sucks. Its extremely inconsistent.</i></P>

<P></P>

<P>I suppose this is a bit off topic, but if it benefits anyone it might be worth posting...</P>

<P></P>

<P>The bias towards the selected AF point in Canon's flash exposure metering is far too extreme. This is compounded by the fact that if all AF points are active, the camera might "bless" one point on one shot, and another on the next shot, resulting in two shots back-to-back with very different exposures.</P>

<P></P>

<P>If you move AF activation off the shutter release onto the rear button, and do not hold down the rear button when you shoot with flash (i.e. focus, let go, then press the shutter), the system does not bias to an AF point, at least on the bodies I own. Then it becomes very consistent and predictable. No problems what so ever. I like that configuration any way (AF on rear button) so I have no problems with my flash. I would guess most people leave AF on their shutter release and get the flash-spot-meter effect.</P>

<P></P>

<P>Canon should just turn off the AF point bias in their flash metering. I don't know who at Canon engineering thought that level of bias was a good idea. Their flashes are wonderful without that stupid bias in the metering.</P>

[joseph_wisniewski]

Moses, I can attest from personal experience, that the D3 firmware enabled AF illumination with my 14mm, a borrowed 14-24, my 12-24 DX, and my 8mm Sigma fisheye.

 

Ilkka, how dare you attempt to inject sense into this thread about taking pictures of drugged out ravers from a distance of 4 inches from their faces. Which, incidentally, I've even done on film with the 8mm fisheye.

[pete_s.]

Gabe, sorry but wideangles and af assist is a known problem with the D300 (until Nikon fixes it).

 

As you said hyperfocal focusing doesn't work because at f/2.8 there isn't that much dof. But pre-focusing does. Estimate the distance and change the focus manually to that distance. Working in the dark you need to learn where the distances are on your lens however. Do it by starting at infinity and then turn.

 

Regarding auto iso with the flash, remember that the iso you dial into your camera is the minimum. The camera won't increase the iso if it can get the image with flash at full power. So if you set it at 800 that will be the minimum and it will only go higher if the flash can't expose the scene at full blast.

 

Peter

[moses_sparks]

To Joseph: Thank you, can't wait to try it out.

 

To Gabriel: Seems I now have a 14mm lens on a full frame camera that will AF in total darkness with amazing image quality at ISO 3200, and I'm located in SoCal too...let me know if you need to hire a photographer to shoot your raves :)

 

Actually I spent most of today shooting fire damage for my employer, NBC Universal. Now THAT was a spectacular light show!

[joseph_wisniewski]

Gabriel, the most current D300 firmware is 1.02, and as far as I know, it does nothing to the AF. For Nikon, the last digit indicates very minor bug fixes, so 1.02 means two revisions of those. The D3 firmware was a major revision, it went up in the next number, 1.11. Nikon changed menus, added a few features, and altered the AF. The AF is mentioned in the manual, so a change means putting the camera and the manual "out of sync", and for Nikon, that's major.

 

"Your talking about those high-power headset lights? I know those put out a lot of power and take 2-3 AAA batteries and I could easily strap it to my flash. Only problem is I do not want to be turning it on/off when I shoot. If I did leave it on, would the powerful red have much effect on the photo?"

 

Actually, the ones I'm thinking of are built like short flashlights. But the principle is the same. Yup, just leave it on. The red isn't that powerful, and won't even show in the picture unless you're wide open, ISO 1600, and 1/15 sec. Just make sure the light is up near the flash, not down near the lens, because it will cause red eye.

[joseph_wisniewski]

Hmmm, looking at your pics, I can see you do use some pretty long exposure times. You probably would want to have a local electronic geek whip you up something that would cut the light out for a second or two, triggered by the flash firing, so you only get a millisecond of red in the picture.

[joseph_wisniewski]

Moses, did you get to shoot the fire, or just the aftermath.

 

I've shot burnt out buildings before, while they were still smoldering. My friend Bryce Denison is the chief forensic photographer for the City of Detroit fire department. He photographs all the fatal fires, which means he's shot thousands of fire aftermaths.

[lex_jenkins]

Very good work there, Gabe. Great pix.

 

Things have changed a bit since my misspent youth and the "juice bars" and 'ludes of the NYC scene of the '70s. Never saw anywhere near that many people in one event.

 

Whew, and I thought we were a decadent bunch. I'm definitely gettin' too old for this stuff.

[moses_sparks]

Joseph,

 

I just shot documentation photos of the aftermath. The fire started early Sunday morning and was out by the time I went to the studio on Monday.

 

I don't know if there are even AP or Reuters shots of the actual fire, it's not like news photographers can just drive onto the lot, it's a secure facility and you have to get clearance, etc.

 

The only fire shots I've seen were taken by firemen on the scene with cell phones.

[oskar_ojala]

<i>But what did you mean about the IR filter? I dont get that part...what does it have to do with manually focusing?</i>

 

<p>I had a completely opaque IR filter on the lens -- couldn't see anything through it. I was shooting in the 28-35 mm range, but had the benefit or a nice small aperture (something like f5.6 and f8). It's a different kind of problem, but prefocusing is still an interesting technique.

[pge]

I have the solution, at least I think I do, although probably nobody will ever read this post being about 8 feet below the original question. Anyways here is the solution according to me who does not own either a d300 or an sb800, although I do own a d200 and an sb600.

 

Set your d300 on commander mode so that it will remotely fire the sb800 and the camera's af assist lamp will do the job. But since you are shooting in a crowd and want the sb800 on the d300's hotshoe, put some electrical tape on your hotshoe, or on the sb800 before mounting it so that a contact is not made.. Then the sb800 will be where you want it to be but your camera will not know it.

 

Phil

[moses_sparks]

Well, if Phil is 8 feet below the OP I guess I'm about 10, but in the interest of "closure" of sorts I'll jump in anyway.

 

I downloaded and installed the new firmware update for the D3 and I'm happy to report it DOES correct the AF assist issue with the flash.

 

The D3/SB800/14-24 combo now works perfectly at the wide end of the flash.

 

Since the D3 and D300 share similar AF components and were released at the same time I have to think there will be a firmware update for the D300 that will correct this issue in that camera too.

 

Best of luck.

[gabriel_afana]

Phil, that is a great idea! I am gonna try that

[joseph_wisniewski]

"I downloaded and installed the new firmware update for the D3 and I'm happy to report it DOES correct the AF assist issue with the flash."

 

Told you! ;)

 

"Since the D3 and D300 share similar AF components and were released at the same time I have to think there will be a firmware update for the D300 that will correct this issue in that camera too."

 

I have no doubt. The only problem is that it's the kind of thing Nikon likes to put into a major firmware release (like the 1.10 D3 firmware, not the 1.02 D300 firmware). D3 had a bunch of things that needed a "major", like the AF zone indicators being hard to see.

 

So, the more D300 users that write polite notes to Nikon about how much this issue means to D300 shooters, the sooner it's going to get on the "major" list.

 

Gabriel, this means you.

[scott_arnold]

Gabe,

 

I saw this question posted to Nikonians earlier but didnt yet have a SB-800 flash. Mine just came in today and I too experienced the behavior you are speaking of, namely with my Nikkor 18-55 f/3.5-5.6G lens and D300 body, the AF light on the SB-800 does not illuminate from the 18-19mm range. Once you get to 20mm it starts lighting up.

 

I did some trial and error and I can now get it to illuminate in the 18-19mm range. On my camera, the focal point box defaulted to the bottom middle of the viewfinder just above the grid line. If I set the camera to single point or dynamic area AF and move the focal point to the middle of the viewfinder by unlocking the focus selecter switch (pg 66 in the manual), the AF light on the SB magically starts to illuminate throughout the entire range of my zoom lense.

 

I have no idea why this works, short of the camera is smart enough to know that it wont pick up the light when the focus point is set to the bottom. Regardless of why it works, it does so on my camera - I'd be curious to see if it works on yours. If it works, you wont even have to do this every time you power on as the camera remembers your focus point for the last time you used it.

 

(ps. forgive me if I didnt use proper terminology - I'm just getting into the digital slr world from point and shoots myself)

[tinostanicic]

Thank you Joseph, Gabriel and Moses. I own nikon d300, 10.5mm fisheye and sb-800 and have the same problem with AF illuminator. I hope nikon releases new firmware soon.

 

 

best regards

 

p.s. SB-800 AF illuminator works just fine with Nikon DX VR 18-200 mm F3.5-5.6G

[stwrtertbsratbs5]

It's been a long while since I checked this thread. I hope to hell that my kids never get into the rave scene.

 

Anyway, I'd go with the DOF table that I referenced above. Setting the focus to the hyperfocal distance of 21 feet will keep everything from 10.5 feet to infinity in reasonable sharp focus. Choose a closer focus point instead if it will provide enough DOF.

[kaiyen]

What I'm not quite getting still is why you have to shoot at such high ISO's and 2.8. I know you want to avoid blurred people around the main subject. But, as you say, you are dragging the shutter just a bit. Well, you can still drag the shutter just a bit to get a bit of background, and the flash will take care of freezing the closest subjects (note plural) in such a dark setting. Yes, you will get some movement but light fall off should be fast enough that you will only notice it on the people quite a ways away from the camera (and yes, I know how packed a rave is...but then that also means that all those people packed right up against you will still be frozen by the flash.

 

I have been to one rave-ish environment (haven't been to a rave since high school...which wasn't that long ago, really) since getting into photography. 5.6 at 1/4 gave me what looked like a fully lit scene. And only people like 10' from the camera had any blurring. So if you are happy with the amount of ambient you have in your sample photos (way less than what I had, in other words), then you should be able to do 5.6 and 1/30th or something and be at 400 or 800 ISO and be okay.

 

What's just what I'm thinking. I'm sorry if I'm missing the message.

[andrew_bell3]

This issue has been fixed in the 1.10 firmware update released by Nikon on October 27. When I first reported it to

NPS in March they fobbed me off as it was a "design feature" however further pestering got it fixed in the D3 at the

start of Summer (iirc the 2.0 firmware update). Us D300 owners have had to wait another six months! Shows you

who has priority eh...<br /><br />

 

It seems that you need to work in nightclub photography to appreciate how needed this has been. I can finally break

out the fisheye again!<br /><br />

 

Here's the download link: <a href="https://nikoneurope-en.custhelp.com/cgi-

bin/nikoneurope_en.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=25962&p_created=1223644411" title="D300 1.10 firmware

update fixes AF assist issue">D300 1.10 update for

windows</a>.