brushmeister

Yo, Ro....tried sending you an email but could not do it. Sorry for not answering promptly, but this little project now on hold for awhile for me, with other events conspiring for my attention. In any case, thanks, I would be most greatful for your assistance.

 

Myron

Shot this jpg of fawn using "cheap" Nikon 400mm 5.6 EDIF on a D100 set to ISO 1600, 1/250 sec at f/5.6 from 15 feet away. Little feller suprised me, and was so close I barely had time to react. Lens set me back a whopping $275 plus shipping. Wish I had pre-set the lens at F/8 to gain DOF, but thats the breaks.<div></div>

Got replacement for that lost tiny screw for attaching chip to lens mount. (Thank you, Essex Camera Repair.) I installed the CPU in my Nikon 600mm. Plenty of room in that tube, for sure. One could actually connect the chip to the mount without removing mount from the lens, and tuck tail in place. But, when drilling holes you then take the big risk of filings falling down into lens interior. Don?t need that.

 

To cut or not to cut? That was my first big question.

 

Bjorn says earlier? ?The segment outside point "B" is the distance ("D") area of the print and I never had any issue with just cutting it off. On the other hand, leaving it intact won't do any harm either, if there is room inside the lens to be modified.?

 

Bjorn, you also say this tail can in fact be cut, and imply doing it right only depends on where the cut is made! That certainly lifts fog off the subject! Now if I only knew how to determine the where part.

 

Gentlemen, since there is plenty of room in there I agree, leave it intact. However, I still do not like the fact that this long tail comes all way around inside the tube and overlaps itself. What if live contacts touch each other? That was my prime reason for wanting to cut it.

 

OK, Vivek, you address the additional problems, thank you for sharing your experience/input. I see my chip/tape matches your number 1 sample, but am having trouble understanding how to take the action you propose.

 

Before going further, summing up where I am now?..with CPU installed I immediately took lens outside, mounted on D100 and shot tests.

 

First thing I found out was the D100 display blinked F - - - endlessly. At that point I thought game over until I casually stopped down lens aperture ring to min. f/22. The camera unlocked! That joy of discovery then crashed when I discovered had no control over aperture, regardless what program used, or what control wheels I turned. Something more needs to be done. Vivek, I know you have the answer.

 

Some test images grossly overexposed, others perfect. But at what settings? Looks like the same hit-miss-adjust I had before adding the CPU, but with less control. Nikon View software can?t know what was done since the chip?s ?connection? to the lens diaphragm is bogus to begin with. Although a variety of aperture/shutter speeds showed on the display, there was no way to confirm if image shot was influenced by them. If I set camera on A-Priority and changed the lens aperture I was back to F - - - and a locked up D100. Oh, yeah, baby, aren?t this fun?

 

As for the test images, shot 25 ft from tripod mounted camera, all settings same with following exception:

 

Shot 1: D100 display 1/800 sec @ f/22 Manual mode

Shot 2: D100 display 1/2000 sec @ f/4.8 Manual mode

Shot 3: D100 display 1/800 sec @ f/8 Shutter priority

 

 

Silly me. Results show camera shot all three with same aperture opening, f/22. Only changes were the shutter speeds. And, CPU not calibrated to this lens evidently caused selection of wrong shutter speed when using Shutter Priority. Nikon View thinks they were shot at 50mm. OK, fine. It?s a learning experience.

 

Well, this brings me back to square one. I?m thinking I had more options without the CPU. Obvious next key step would be to do what Bjorn and Vivek suggest??..

 

?Find the position corresponding to the max. aperture on the lens you are doing a chip upgrade on, and then cut the print at that position. Then, using a small piece of wire and solder, make a permanent short-circuit to connect the relevant lanes.?

 

Ignoring the ?cut print at that position,? (lets not go there again) part, so?.. you say I should find out where on the chip/tape it thinks F/4 is. And exactly HOW is that found again? Bjorn? Vivek? Ro Ro?

 

Guys, when I put the mount with chip attached (sans lens) onto camera and the tape is dangling out there, and used a small piece of wire to bridge contacts, I get no subsequent reactions in the camera display. By the way, have found this trick alone is a finger exercise that would challenge the dexterity of a Russian acrobat.

 

 

 

I don't miss using a split image rangefinder at all. Always got better results using ground glass. No shifting of camera to find a crossing line to match up perpendicular to the split image, no darkened half images, no viewfinder artifacts interrupting my deep and profound analysis of the composition before me, etc, etc.

Exactly what do you gain by changing focus screens (whatever that means?) I am constantly using my trusty D100 with my old MF lenses, the 55mm Micro-Nikkor f3.5, 400mm Nikon f5.6, 600mm Nikon F4, and a 24mm Sigma f2.8 with absolutely no problems. You just focus and meter manually within the camera, like back in the 50's and 60's.

I found an FA new on sale in Macy's back when their camera dept was dumping MF stock for the big retail push to AF. I couldn't resist the price. I liked the TTL feature best. After a couple years its program modes became unreliable. The maitrix metering feature never impressed me either, particularly with contrasty subject matter. It seemed more like a marketing gimmick than a practical tool. Then the little black button controlling the switch between maitrix and center weighted popped out, got lost, and a replacement never could be counted on to stay in. Lastly, the film advance lever developed a hitch. These things drove me away from making it my go-to camera body when the rubber hits the road.

 

When Hanz Lanting was shooting in darkest Africa for months at a time, living off cans of tuna fish, which camera did he bring along as back up? The FE-2. That says a lot. Simpler is better. If you don't need TTL, an old FM-2 is super reliable, light as a feather, impossible to beat.

I agree with you, Charlie and David and Brian. Snipping the tail may be unwise, so why risk it? Was hoping someone with an electronics backround would pop up and explain with facts why going either way is best. I continue to hope for that.

 

I also agree, Brian, that drilling the screw holes in the exact right place on the lens mount is the hardest job. Think I made it easier. I first made a drilling template from a scrap piece of aluminum shaped to fit snugly in the 1/8"-wide recessed trough of the mount. The smallest drill bit off the shelf at Home Depot, 1/32", is a perfect match for those two tiny screws holding the CPU fast to the inside rim of the mount. Now I am ready to place the template, using the contacts' position relative to the rim as a guide. .....Uh-oh! Alas, I just lost one of the buggers. It's gone. Things now on hold till I am able to find another tiny screw. Bummer there.

 

By the way, as an aside, those tiny screws require a really small phillips head jewelers screwdriver. I bought a nice set for $7 at Radio Shack and promptly broke the one I needed! Brittle, or what?! The screw I tried to remove must have been super glued in there. It burns me I gotta buy a whole new set just to get that size Phillips. No tool store I have found sells these super tiniest of drivers.

 

I rarely use flash with these long telephoto lenses, so chip compatibility for flash is irrelevant to me. In any case my trusty Vivitar 283 is up to the job. Bjorn says "which chip used isn't important" but he's referring to his own modification of a Nikon M extension tube. How this applies to my project is another unanswered question. He also did not snip off any of the long tail, I see, by his pictures. Now, there's a nice clue.

 

The quest continues. Thank you all for your advice, but don't stop. Call your electronic-whiz friends. This ain't brain surgery.

I own a Nikon 400mm EDIF MF f5.6 and a 600mm f/4. I want to make

these super sharp oldies but goodies function with my D100's

metering system. I use them now with the camera, but the metering is

manual. I guess the right combination, shoot a test shot, then

adjust the exposure accordingly. It's no problem, but I want to

improve on that, to Aperture priority. Why? Just because I can (or

think I can).

 

Say I cannibalize a CPU chip from a "for parts" Nikon lens of

similar aperture. So long as the contacts match up in the D100 body

will I fool the camera into metering aperture priority with a thusly

modified 600mm MF lens? I think yes.

 

I don't have an electronics background so maybe what I'm practicing

is electronic butchery, but that's just me. Corresponding question

on circuitry: the "for parts" CPU I have, ready to use, has a long

tail of printed ciruitry to accomodate switches for zooming, etc.

They are now redundant. If I simply snip straight across these lines

will I do no harm to the chips' basic functions? I'm thinking no

harm will be done so long as these printed circuits don't touch each

other. Is that right?

 

PS: Screw Roland Elliot. He won't answer my emails.<div></div>

Lens choices aside, your smartest move is to bring along a back-up camera. I suggest a good shirt-pocket model with a 35mm lens, say the Olympus Stylus, or something similar.

 

WHY ??? To cover yourself when that prime camera gets left on a bus or is stolen. Easily done in the heat of an exciting trip. It happened to friends of mine on their big China trip. Oboy, that was pain.

You didn't say, but if you're using Photoshop, have you tried going to the Photoshop website and looking for free "Actions" you can download?

Absolutely, Joe. By adding inferior glass I was alluding to the adding of "inferior" (third party, or knock off) glass, not adding prime Nikon or Canon or Olympus, etc close up glass. Nothing inferior about them, and a superior price range for 'em assures it. Of course that also assures a market for the "inferior" (read affordable for the unwashed masses) glasses.

 

Extension tubes at least assure that the shot will not be adversely influenced by any glass other than whats already built into the lens.

If you look at the front of your lens, as you focus closer to an object the front elements of your lens move away from the camera. Using extension tubes allows those elements to get farther away, allowing for even closer focusing. A better alternative to using add on close up lenses since no inferior glass is added. The negative side is you have to add exposure, but any programed camera will do that for you automatically. Just shoot aperture priority and use a tripod.

IMHO this is a no-brainer. Very fair price. Buy it. Build is superior to the plasticky D70 which means the D100 will give you better service in long run. Don't let the hair splitters blow smoke up your aperture with claims of alleged superior D70 images, "less noise", faster zoom, etc.

 

If you can make a hundred angels stand on the head of a pin, and the next guy fits 20 more on that pin head, so what! No one will ever see them.

Silverfast is better. No contest.

There is another option. Shoot slides. Shooting slides has always been the best way around getting back from a big shoot with 12 to 20 rolls and dealing with the bulk and expense and inconvenience of matching up piles of machine prints. With slides simply toss the ones not keepers. One original, one image. Put them twenty at a time in a slide sheet you can store in a 3-ring binder for quick reference.

 

Of course, if your flatbed scanner doesn't do transparencies you're out of luck. Costco processes 36 exp roll of slides for I think about 6 bucks. No I don't think they will scan slides to a disk, though.

 

Unlike with negatives, a slide gives you precicely what you exposed in the viewfinder. No chance of it being cropped, or getting blown out highlights, or a dull, off color print due to a printing machine that didn't know you wanted the background really black, etc.

Its probably because the chip contacts are no longer mated properly. Dont ask me what changed that, since you probably never touched 'em after loading. Try wedging a piece of mat board or similar thickness cardboard down in front of the cartridge that's giving you this alert. This pushes the cartr. in more, toward its mating 2200 contact. This worked for me. If that don't do it you might consider pulling out the cartridge and re-inserting and pushing the cartridge in and to the rear more.

 

Personally I think the trouble arises from cheapo MIS cartridge design. On mine I noticed a lack of a positive "click" when dropping in their cartridges. Due, I think, to weak spring clips.

 

MIS is very good about this. If you call their tech person he'll even send you a replacement chip to put in their cartridge.

Try this foolproof method:

 

1. Cut foamcore (preferred) or your favorite backing board same size as mat.

 

2. Lay print on backing board and center it. On the board, mark left and bottom edges of the print paper.

 

3. With pencil and ruler, draw lines on the board, up left side edge of print, and across the bottom width of print. These lines are your print allignment reference guides.

 

4. Buy a pad of StudioTac, a heatless, dry adhesive transfer paper at any really good art supply store and apply to back of print. Or, simply make yourself some corner brackets with thin, folded strips of paper, and use tape.

 

5. Allign print on backing board using your penciled line guides.

 

6. Now you can position your mat over photo to easily mark your mat cut lines, using the image as the reference point, and cut that mat exactly how you want it.

Been printing BO with UT7 inks all week and getting great results. When I ran out of Eboni and got my replacement cartridge things got nervous since I noticed it was not the same looking cartridge, and there was no positive click into the printer slot. Sure enough, the 2200 flagged me down with a screen message and said it didn't recognize that cartridge. I was hot to keep printing, but now was stopped cold. Searched MIS site for frequently answered troubles with no success, so I called them up for an answer. Tech guy I spoke with explained they changed cartridge manufacturers and there might be a problem with the new cartridge spring clip flattening out, which means the chips don't mate when you drop it in. He got that right.

 

When it happens, the 2200 assumes you got the wrong cartridge in there, even if you don't. Fortunately, solution he gave me was quick and dirty: jam a piece of mat board down in front of the cartridge to force it back against the printers chip, so the two will mate. I did that, and it worked! Other solution was for MIS to ship me a separate chip to attach to the cartridge, how, I don't have a clue, but they were nice enough to send me one. The bothersome thing is if they already knew their cartridges might not seat (because are dinky, more cheaply made) why no heads up on the MIS site? It could have saved me a few gray hairs.

 

After that problem was solved, and I got the second cartridge that ran out (light gray,) I was ready to resume not-just-black-only printing. I want to make some of my images as nice warm sepia prints as well as the default platinum warm. That's why they got yellow, and cyan, and magenta cartridges in there, right? But, the many options, profiles, workflows, color management controls, etc etc you got to choose from when printing out of Photoshop would have me spinning in my grave, if I was dead.

 

I thought you could print a nice warm sepia image or a nice cold cool image with these MIS UT7 inks by simply adjusting the color management like Paul Roark says, to say, cyan +6, magenta -6, yellow +25. WRONG! Damn him and his downloaded curves that don't work for me. After many many attempts at juggling options around, I feel like the one guy taking the brain surgery exam who skipped twelve chapters in the textbook. My results all come out the same, a nice platinum whatever print. I am wasting a lot of money, using up these inks much too fast. It is becoming a drag.

 

I may junk that MIS UT7 group and stick with Epsons color cartridges because what I see on my screen, after all my brilliant tonal adjustments, is not what I'm getting!

Well when I need to get back wide with the D100 or with my N90 I still go with my old, old (fifty-two-dollars at B&H 25-? years ago) Sigma 24mm 2.8 MF lens. It has remained in my bag because it is (cough, like the D100) GREAT! No, I have never test-compared it side by side with the big boys, so I can't give it a "Bjorn Rorslet Blessing," but, then, the results I've gotten say enough to me.

 

I will admit, though, I'd rather have a Nikon 20mm on my D100... only because of that damn digital 1.5 factor.

I don't have the battery pack or the Lexar but wanted to add my two cents because I also consider my D100 to be a great camera. After all the heavy breathing over the D70 it is nice to see someone say that. Great handling, great feel in the hand, rugged, reliable, (D70 users eat your heart out) intuitively versatile, and great especially because I can easily use my great old Nikon MF, Ai lenses on it even without automatic metering, a crutch I wonder if many photogs today can function without.

 

Fancy matrix metering modes? So over-rated. Nice, of course, and of course I use them, but obsession with that is so silly. Like anyone is really going to tell the difference between F/11 and F/10.5. Do any of the AF generation remember or even heard of that old rule..."F8 and be there?" Is there a great camera out there that has all the latest features and still works easily with 20-30 year old lenses? Some of the greatest lenses ever made, I might add. Yes there is, and it's the (great) D100.

 

When doing the manual no metering thing you simply view the exposures for accuracy immediately in the D100 rear window, then quickly correct and re-shoot. No big deal. That's Instant Polarioid in 35mm format and what turned me on to digital in the first place.

 

Ah, but I rant. (P.S> did I mention I think the D100 is great?)

I just took delivery on a factory refurbished 2200 I bought from Epson. If buying "new" is not important, this is the best deal I could find. It comes complete with warranty, looks and works like new. Fit and finish is mint. $559 including free UPS shipping from Indiana makes it a considerable savings over B&H, IMO. Go to the Epson.com site and check it out.

 

They also sell their paper. I bought a 13" wide roll of the Luster paper. Results are superb, but the roll's inherent heavy duty curl is a real turn-off. I thought I would do better saving paper using the roll, but despite Epson software, have not been able to figure out how to save paper by making a landscape image print in portrait. That is the most frustrating problem I've encountered.

I hate when that happens. When I've had that problem I always found success using an 8-inch Stillson wrench on it... but be sure to wrap the lens in an old rubber inner tube, first.<div></div>

Got my problems cleared up. I deleted every scrap of Nikon viewer 6.1 I could find, then reinstalled it all over again (from disk)but this time I made sure to include Quicktime Player (forgot about that earlier) and Capture...even though that "gate" remains closed due to trial period ending. Then I went to Nikon USA and downloaded upgrades to the very latest. Viola!

 

Don't know which step brought back shooting data but for sure bringing back Quicktime got the slideshow feature back. Maybe shooting data was there all the time, even, but my yahoo-idiot keystrokes may have hid it. Dunno, probably never will.

If I may add to this query....

After my 30-day trial period for Capture expired I wasn't ready to spend money on Capture. I decided to make some space and deleted all of the Capture software but kept on using Nikon View. However, now it will not show any of the camera settings shooting data. I tried reinstalling View but nothing changed.

 

Shooting data won't show itself. Oh, and sometime along the way I also stopped being able to run slideshow in View.

 

Any more ideas on what happened/solutions?

There's an ebay seller offering these batteries at $3 apiece, but then charges $9 to ship. Ignoring the logic of that, I ordered two batteries from him. They have been working great in my D100. Could it be true the same manufacturer sells his product to Nikon AND then also sells his product to lesser gods who put another name on it?

 

Golly Gee, slap my knee, now there is a clever way to move inventory. What'll dey think of next? Hmmm, sounds too good to be true. Must be a catch. Should I have played it safe and spent the extra $30bucks.....(?cough!)