allan_jamieson2

I've still got a copy of this lens which I used to use a lot on my Olympus OM4Ti many years ago. Tried it on my D800 a while ago, still bitingly sharp but lens coatings don't look good on digital, nasty colours; far better getting a newer version of this lens which is actually designed for digital cameras.

Hi Shun, just checked and on my camera it says C 1.02 and L 2.09, so obviously not running the latest software version. I don't tend to have much luck with electronic devices, they often seem to behave in strange ways!

PS Just realised that the camera also switched itself over from Raw files to Jpeg and just the medium quality setting at that, giving me 8mb files. Luckily none of the images that I took this afternoon were of any great importance anyway!

Thanks Matthew! When I checked the camera again this morning after putting the battery back in. No surprise it was still stuck with the 1.3 crop mode but showing DX in the main menu. I tried i button which took me back to the same menu, except that this time the menu showed 1.3 selected rather than DX. So I was finally able to put it back to DX. A very strange software glitch or so it would seem!

I'll try leaving the battery out overnight and maybe another reset to see if that changes anything. It was working fine before then, it seems to be something that the camera has done itself, strange that it is still insisting that it is in DX mode, yet is displaying the 1.3 crop message and crop lines.

Just wondering if anyone has ever encountered this issue before. I noticed recently that my D7200 wasn't including everything that was in the viewfinder. I'd seen the 1.3 at the side and wondered what that was about, checking the menu the camera is definitely set at DX and not 1.3. Tried switching back and forwarded between the two settings, images are definitely being cropped to 1.3 every time. I saw a mention of a soft reset online, tried that, no difference whatsoever. I've never used the camera with the 1.3 crop mode before, checking back I can see that the camera changed from DX to 1.3 crop about a month ago. I seem to be "lucky" with these glitches as both my D7200 and D800 have to have their sensors cleaned in Live View as the menu mode for cleaning the sensor leaves the shutter stuck in front of the sensor these days!

I've got a 2015 Apple MacBook 15 inch Pro Retina laptop, bought it new just over 2.5 years ago grey market via eBay and it has worked flawlessly until a few days ago. Working late I connected my external hard disk to it for about the third time that night as I was transferring images from the laptop onto my older iMac, the screen instantly began flashing bright screen over the darker areas. Tried restarting it, nothing changed. Read various threads online and tried various resets/ hardware tests again no change whatsoever, everything seems to show as normal, one of the threads suggested updating Adobe Flash Player, checked that and it is fully up to date, set to update automatically, so obviously not connected to that. The flashing green screen doesn't go away at all, except when I tried a safe restart, the screen was absolutely normal then, so guessing not hardware related? Tried to do a screenshot to attach to this but no matter how many times I tried this, each and every screenshot came out entirely normal with no green visible at all, even though the screen that I could see was virtually all green. To demonstrate it I took a photograph with my iPhone which I've attached here. Just wondering if there is something else that I can do before taking it in for repair?

Well finally got some time to have another go at getting access to the sensor to clean it. Tried a firmware update, which made no difference whatsoever. As per heimbrandt above I then tried the last resort of using Live View and this time it worked, didn't need to set it to do a video recording just plain old Live View, which allowed me access to the sensor and thus to give it a proper clean. I had also called Lehmann's this morning too to enquire about sending it in to them for servicing and they hadn't heard of this kind of issue before either, which is pretty telling in itself that this is a very unusual fault. I might well send it into them at some future date for a proper check and service but will check the images out and see if they come out as clean as the sensor currently looks!

I'll work my way through all your suggestions this week when I get a chance and hopefully one of them will sort this out, if all else fails Lehmann's sound like a good option!

PS I did take the camera settings off of mirror lockup on the M A S P dial too but it still made no difference in getting the shutter to keep out of the way when trying to use the Lock mirror up for cleaning function.

Shun I've tried both methods and neither works on this camera, the mirror locks up but the shutter stays down blocking access to the sensor completely. As you say the D800 works in exactly the same way for cleaning the sensor via the Lock mirror up for cleaning function as does virtually every other Nikon DSLR that I can think of. I went to the menu first of all, had the cleaning swab and rocket blower waiting and ready only to see nothing at all but the shutter, half an hour of trying every possible combination of ways to get the mirror to lockup and I was still left looking at the shutter. It doesn't seem that anyone here has ever encountered this particular issue before, it isn't even as if the camera has had a lot of use it has a fairly low shutter count. The other strange thing is that the mirror won't stay locked up even set from the menu, it returns fairly soon, wonder if it could be some sort of shutter fault or software glitch?

The camera is set to clean the sensor at start up and switch off, can't see how it would need to be plugged into the mains to get the mirror to lock up and the shutter retracted as it should be to do a proper cleaning though. Haven't had a chance to try to update the firmware as yet but will try that sometime this week and see if that unscrambles this rather confused camera!

I don't tend to change firmware on any of my cameras but at this stage I'll give anything that I can do myself a chance and if that doesn't change anything I'll check out T mode too, thanks for the suggestions.

Looking for a bit of advice here, just getting around to trying to clean the sensor on my D7200. I know how things should and do work as I've cleaned my D800 sensor quite a few times but my D7200 seems to be faulty as it doesn't seem to work in anything like the way that it should! First thing is the battery is fully charged, pressing the option to Lock the mirror up for cleaning and a loud click is audible but when you look inside the camera and yes the mirror has locked up but the sensor is hidden away behind the shutter and completely unreachable! I looked at this for a short time and then the mirror returned by itself giving a short glimpse of the elusive sensor. Has anyone else ever encountered anything like this before? Tried re-charging the battery to make sure it was absolutely charged to the brim and it only took a few minutes to confirm that the battery was as fully charged as any battery could be but it still wouldn't work properly. Second battery same issue, click to lockup the mirror, up it goes but shutter is still in front of the sensor. Also tried with standard mirror lockup setting and exactly the same situation. I've also reset the camera to factory settings pressing the ISO and Exposure compensation button until the top screen went blank, no difference. I'm rather at a loss what to do here, no warranty left on the camera, it was bought grey market off of eBay and it did develop a different fault fairly soon after buying it in that the flash would only work in the auto mode and no other setting. Tried returning it at the time and it was allegedly returned to Hong Kong but came back months later with no increase whatsoever in the shutter count, so very unlikely that any servicing or checking was done on the camera. Seller not very helpful after that and didn't want to lose the camera for months again as I'd barely used it so didn't bother too much as I rarely use flash and tend to use the D800 more for any landscape type images and have been using the D7200 as a lighter weight walk around camera, for which purpose it has been very good until now that is. Beginning to think that this particular camera is a bit of a lemon! Might have to send it into Nikon UK for a once over but that is likely to be rather expensive and although there is a more local Nikon agent in Glasgow, my experience of them in the past was awful, so no way would I trust them with anything of mine again after they destroyed two lenses and washed their hands of the whole situation. Anybody know any other good UK based companies that work on Nikon cameras? The dust spots are only visible with HDR type images, but there do seem to be rather a lot of them! They don't really seem to be visible on single exposures. I would obviously like to clean the sensor sooner rather than later to eliminate this issue but can't work out how to do that seemingly simple task if the camera won't let me actually see the sensor for longer than a split second!

That isn't an uncommon issue but a lot easier to fix these days in post processing than back in the days when colour transparency film was often used. You would think that in theory if you know the correct exposure and are using manual settings that images taken with different lenses at these same exposure settings should be fairly similar in appearance if the light is fairly constant but back in my medium format days I had one lens in particular which always seemed to produce over exposed images compared to the other lenses that I used, taking images of the same scene in the same light. That lens was my 105mm lens on a Pentax 67II, both bought new, the 45mm, 55mm and 200mm lenses all produced images with similar appearance in terms of colour saturation and exposure but unless I remembered to underexpose with 105mm lens its images were always that bit too light for my taste.

There is nothing whatsoever wrong with buying and using a D800 today, I bought one when it first came out and it has been a great camera. I can't say that I have used it as much during the last few years but when I do use it I am always impressed at the image quality and the incredible amount you can crop from an image and still get a good final image/ print. I have a D7200 as a walk around camera and it has pretty good image quality too, just not on the same level as the D800.

Seems like this will be a great camera for those able to buy at US price levels but obviously Nikon don't want to sell many in the UK (or EU) as the launch price at £3499 is £1100 higher than the launch price of the D800! Saying that my D800 is still working very well and much as I'd like to be able to upgrade to the D850, that is just not going to happen any time soon!

I think that the simple truth with most lenses is that most of the time it is better to leave it alone, unless you have an obvious problem with a good lens which is worth getting repaired. I made the mistake of taking my Nikon 20mm and 24mm AIS lenses to the local Nikon agent in Glasgow some years ago and they basically wrecked both lenses, all that was wrong with them was they were a bit dusty, when I went back to collect them they were in a terrible state with loads of black flecks inside the lens elements (I noticed that the company had some windows open including the area where their technicians worked!) I refused to pay for the shoddy work and asked them to put the lenses right, next time around the 20mm was a bit cleaner but with an obvious streaky mark inside the lens and the 24mm lens had a small scratch on the front element. I complained to them and Nikon and got nowhere with it, they gave me the 20mm lens back and kept the 24mm to see what they could do, which turned out to be absolutely nothing at all. I tried the 20mm out with my D800 when I got it back but it was pretty poor and I've never used it since then. I think they still have the 24mm lens which to this day they deny damaging! So if you live in Scotland and need your Nikon camera or lens fixed, please send it straight to Nikon UK and not to their Glasgow agent!

I've got the same camera with the 18-140mm lens and had a number of issues with over and under exposure with it for a while, I think in that case the culprit was some auto bracketing setting hidden inside the menus. I don't recall ever having turned it on myself and can only presume it was sent to me with this setting activated. Check to see if your flash works properly, mine only now works in auto mode, used to work in aperture priority but can't get it to work that way at all now, which is very strange and watch out for the infamous 18-140mm lens crap design which means the plastic edge coming loose above the rubber grip and sliding down the lens barrel. Mine did that too and it took a bit of pushing and shoving to work out how to re-attach it, never experienced this with any other lens before, it is a decent lens but not very well built!

<p>iA stands for Intelligent Auto, it's on most Panasonic cameras, designed for your average camera user who doesn't want to think too much about anything other than composing their photographs.</p>

<p>This has been covered quite a few times over the years but here's my take on the matter! I bought a used Fuji GSW690II years ago as an additional camera when I used a Pentax 67/67II system as my main camera. </p> <p>Plus points are the image size, the transparencies from the Fuji were like jewels when viewed on the light box, endlessly sharp. A great camera to take with you hillwalking as the wider image format seems to lend itself to that very well.</p> <p>Minus point 65mm simply isn't all that wide in 6x9cm format, it is horizontally equivalent to 28mm in full frame these days but very tight top and bottom, especially compared to images taken with the Pentax on a 55mm lens which covered the same horizontally but had a huge amount more top and bottom to them. And depth of field is tight if you are trying to do near to far landscape images unless you are down to f16 or f22, a 65mm lens does not have anything like the depth of field of a 28mm full frame lens.</p> <p>If your friend already has a Mamiya 7 and 50mm lens I can't see any huge advantage in buying the Fuji as that combination will actually give you a wider field of view than the Fuji can, approx 25mm wide versus 28mm in full frame or old 35mm film terminology. The advantage with the Mamiya 7 is that you can add a wider or longer lens instead of having to bring another camera. From my point of view the Mamiya 7 and 50mm lens would be an ideal setup for wide angle landscape photography. I still have my old Fuji GSW690II sitting in a cupboard, my last medium format camera but as things stand I just can't see me ever using it again so will probably sell it this year sometime.</p>

<p>I've seen something similar a few years ago with a new Samyang 14mm lens, took it out to test it with very simple setup, heavy tripod, D800 with mirror locked up and lens set at f8 and infinity pointing towards a bend in a river with trees on the far side. I wasn't expecting to see parts of each image out of focus all in the same area, a lens like that should have been in focus all across that scene, it went straight back to Amazon, end of story. </p> <p>Harder to be sure with an 85mm lens than the 14mm lens though but a bit more testing would soon confirm this if you put it on a tripod and take a few different images at different apertures, if each image is consistently weak in the same areas it would seem likely that you do have a decentred lens.</p>

<p>For ease of handling I would prefer a slimmed down lightweight DSLR body with pro controls but wouldn't be against a Nikon A7RII clone if it can work perfectly with my current Nikon lenses but of course if they ever introduce such a camera it would probably have to have a new lens mount to make the most of the new design without putting too many compromises into it, which takes you back to using adaptors of some description to work with existing Nikon lenses. That might not be a bad thing if it is purpose designed by Nikon rather than a third party maker.</p>

<p>Only Nikon know the answer to this question but it does seem pretty likely that there will be a replacement this year, how much of an improvement the new camera will be is only guesswork at this point. But, I would have to say that for most people, unless you actually are a full time photographer or simply have a lot of money to burn, that there comes a time when enough is enough and even if the new model has better autofocus, takes XQD memory cards and has a new ultra high resolution sensor, do you really, really need it? You might want it and most of us like to have the best we can afford within reason but for the market that this camera would seek to enter, most people would tend to be using this camera on a tripod (most of the time) taking images of predominantly landscape/ cityscape scenes with maybe a bit of macro, portrait work and some wildlife photography too.</p> <p>I'm still using my fairly mint condition D800 which I bought new when this model was first announced, I know that the D810 has a fair few refinements over my camera and that the camera which replaces the D810 will have even more again. But, do I really need these improvements? I'm sure that I would like to have the new camera but with increasing prices in Europe it is likely to be launched at an eye watering price point. When I look at the images from my D800 in Lightroom and Photoshop and see what I can do with them I am often amazed at how easy it is to take a tiny crop from an image and turn that into a very good A3 sized print, what more do I really need or want at this time? That is maybe the issue that Nikon will face as most Nikon D800 series users would love to have the latest and greatest version but maybe rather fewer than Nikon would wish for will actually spend the money to obtain this new camera as they realise that they can probably obtain virtually the same image quality with any D800 series camera no matter how out of date it actually is. The only thing which could really make a big difference that way is the autofocus module, which is certainly in a different league in the D5 and D500.</p> <p>To me a slightly smaller camera even with the existing sensor in the D810 would be a more attractive proposition rather than just simply having a lot more resolution alone. Nikon faces competition from cameras like the Sony A7RII, okay it is mirrorless but it is also very lightweight compared to any D800 camera. With modern materials I would have thought that Nikon could have produced a fairly high resolution body roughly D750 size but even lighter again. That would be far more interesting to me as a replacement to my D800 and maybe at some point we will see a Nikon equivalent of the A7RII too, technology is changing all the time but for now I will keep what I have until something is launched which gives me the image quality of a D800 but in a much lighter camera. I know that I could buy an A7RII but I'd rather not have to use lens adaptors and it would be an extremely expensive option to sell all my Nikon gear and replace it with something else!</p>

<p>Modern Sigma lenses seem much better finished than the older versions, the only ones that I've seen with a bad paint finish have been very old pre digital lenses which had a wretched finish which went sticky with age and then partly came off when cleaned</p>