Richard Williams

<blockquote> <p>Nikon started shipping the D800 in March, 2012 and the D800 shortage was world wide. See this thread from back then: <a href="/nikon-camera-forum/00a822" rel="nofollow">http://www.photo.net/nikon-camera-forum/00a822</a></p> </blockquote> <p>But does this mean that the D800 was 'flying off the shelves', or that Nikon had simply announced a shipping date that was much earlier than they were actually geared up to fulfill in quantity? (I would guess that the actual global sales figures aren't something that's widely known outside Nikon).</p> <blockquote> <p>The following news article from DPReview in March, 2012 should remind you what happened</p> </blockquote> <p> Careful reading of my post might suggest I didn't need reminding! ('to be fair the UK price wasn't exactly a bargain, and there was a pre-launch price hike, sorry correction of an 'internal systems error', giving them plenty of room for discounts'). We can give Nikon the benefit of the doubt about the 'systems error' and assume that the launch price was always meant to be £2600 not £2400. In practice, there were retailers advertising it at £2400-£2500 even after the price hike:</p> <p>https://web.archive.org/web/20140212134952im_/http://www.camerapricebuster.co.uk/graphs/Nikon_D800_Body_graph.png</p> <p>By August, street prices were dropping, hitting £2000 in October and dropping to around £1900 by the end of November, 8 months after the official availability date (and perhaps 4 months after it became more readily available, if Rodeo Joe was still having trouble finding one in July). That's a drop of 20-27%, depending on which launch price we believe, pretty much in line with what happened to the D700 over here (which I think went down from £2000 to somewhere in the £1500-1600 range before prices began to go back up due to currency changes, or whatever). There seem to be similar proportional drops in the sale prices of most Nikon models in the first 3-9 months - I'm not sure that we should read too much into the exact timing, which could depend on several factors. Low demand can lead to an early price drop, but so can over-supply. High demand can keep the price up, but so can production difficulties, leading to under-supply.</p> <p>Would anyone like to open a book on the future price of the D810? Availability doesn't seem to be a problem at the moment. I'd probably bet on some reasonable deals by the January sales.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Most contemporary reviews of the D700 were very positive, recognising the tradeoff between high ISO performance and pixel count, e.g.:<br> http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond700/32<br> As for the pricing and availability of the D800, that sounds like more of a problem with Nikon USA's supply chain than anything else. I don't think there were huge shortages here in the UK, and the street price had dropped £600 by Christmas:<br> http://www.camerapricebuster.co.uk/graphs/Nikon_D800_Body_graph.png<br> (to be fair the UK price wasn't exactly a bargain, and there was a pre-launch price hike, sorry correction of an 'internal systems error', giving them plenty of room for discounts).<br> Nothing wring with the D800 (or D810) and its huge pixel count - it clearly fills a very successful niche, just not quite the same niche as the D700 (hence the interest in a 'D750').</p> <p> </p>

<blockquote> <p>"Finally" implies that Nikon has never gotten anything right before. Given that people have been creating amazing photos with Nikon gear for nearly sixty years, I would say that the company does plenty of things right.</p> </blockquote> <p>They've certainly got a lot right, but perhaps they should never have 'spoiled' us with the F100, D300 and D700, creating expectations that have rarely been met since. Nikon only really seems to pull out all the stops when under significant pressure from Canon - then they stop worrying less about cannibalising sales from the single digit bodies, and more about losing market share. So here's to a strong, aggressively priced '5D mk IV'...</p>

<blockquote> <p>As long as they don't stick it in one of their prosumer bodies and slap a "flip-up" LCD panel on it, I'd be intrigued.</p> </blockquote> <p>One of the rumours is exactly this. </p>

<blockquote> <p>Therefore, the real question is why the OP needs 36MP (or 24MP).</p> </blockquote> <p>Whether the original poster 'needs' a high resolution camera isn't really the question that was asked either. 24MP is standard now, already enough resolution to expose the weaknesses of some older lenses. 36MP is unusual today, but might well turn up in mid-range or even entry-level models in a couple of years - there may soon be no choice! Anyone who has been using Nikon for a while is likely to have a collection of older lenses, and will sooner or later have to deal with the question mayuo has raised. I suspect a lot of us will be supplementing our collections with some new glass that can take full advantage of that pixel count when required, but won't be throwing away all the old gear, which will still have many useful applications. Judging from posts on other forums, quite a few owners of D800s (and modern AFS primes) still seem to be packing lenses like the humble 28-105 in their travel bags. So how good are these older lenses on the cameras of 2014? There's no simple answer. Some are still superb. Others, not so much. But it's a pretty safe bet that any particular combination of lens and camera has been thoroughly tested by several people and described to death in forum or blog postings While there's plenty of information the trick, as usual, is to sort out the informative tests from the clueless bodge jobs and KR-style hypefests.</p>

<p>For what it's worth, my M6 Classic makes a higher pitched click when moving from 1 to B (but not from B to 1, 2 to 1, or 1 to 2).</p>

<p>Apparently the TTL draws current when the release is pressed even when the dial is set to 'B'; only the 'off' setting switches off the electronics:<br> http://leica.nemeng.com/001b.shtml<br> http://leica-users.org/v17/msg07164.html</p>

<p>The rumour sites are getting very excited about a 24Mp FX 'D750', supposedly speed-oriented and ready for Photokina next month. If this checks out it'll be interesting to see how it performs at high ISO...</p>

I'm quite a fan of the old 70-210 f/4 constant aperture lens. You don't get lightning-fast AF, but you do get very decent image quality: http://www.dantestella.com/technical/70210.html . It wasn't made for long and isn't that common, but when it does come up for sale it's very reasonably priced (within your budget).

<blockquote> <p>Lots to pick from. N6006 and 8008s, N90s, F100, F2 A or AS, F3, F4 (bigger but affordable and outstanding), FM series, maybe a Nikkormat Ft2 or Ft3. Check out KEH.</p> </blockquote> <p>The 35, 105 and possibly the 50 are G lenses (no aperture rings), so the only really compatible camera on this list is the F100. The other bodies I mentioned above have the same full compatibility as the F100, except for the lack of AI metering. For completeness, the F5 and F6 will work with everything, but the low-end F55/N55 would be a bad choice (no AFS or VR support). I think the other AF bodies will work with G lenses only in P and S modes. The F2, F3, FM series and the Nikkormats don't have S or P mode, so I guess the G lenses would be stuck at minimum aperture. If you're only really interested in using the 50 and it's an older lens with an aperture ring (i.e., it's not the current AF-S G lens), you do have a wider choice of bodies, and something like an FM-2 would make a good street shooter (as well as metering with the 80-200).</p> <p>Personally, if the F100 was too expensive or too large, I would just go for the F80/N80, which does everything (even VR) except AI metering. You can buy one now for the price of a UV filter and, like the F100 (and D800) it has two command dials (the lower end AF bodies only have the rear dial, so switching between aperture and shutter speed control involves extra fiddling, though they are a bit smaller).</p>

<p>For full support of all these lenses, you'll probably need at least an F100. If you don't care about metering with the AI lens (and assuming the 50 is one of the AF versions) something like an F65/N65 (probably cheapest), F75/N75, or F80/N80.</p>

<p>In the UK, I would give Peter Grisaffi of CRR Luton a call (phone rather than email). He's a highly regarded Leica technician (in spite of the 90s style website!), and mentions Reid as one of the Leica copies he will work on:<br> http://www.angelfire.com/biz/Leica/<br> His site also has an interesting bit of history, the report of the British Intelligence team that visited the Leitz factory in 1946, presumably the source of the data that was used to build the Reid:<br> http://www.angelfire.com/biz/Leica/page26.html<br> http://www.angelfire.com/biz/Leica/page27.html</p> <p> </p>

<p>If the other suggestions have not worked, and before you try chkdsk, it's worth having a go with PhotoRec:</p> <p>http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec</p> <p>Old-school interface, but I've found it to be very effective.</p>

<p>Occasionally you will find real Leicas with crazy third party paint jobs, so you need to look for the telltale differences listed in the Rick Oleson link above to be sure. The shape of the viewfinder that Mukul mentions is the most obvious Soviet feature to me. If you want to know whether it started as a FED or as a Zorki, see: http://jay.fedka.com/index_files/Page391.htm</p>

<blockquote> <p>A third possible explanation to fogging might be the liquid I have been using to clean my lenses and filters. Lenses have been tolerant but those CPLs less.</p> </blockquote> <p>I think that's quite likely. Apparently even high quality polarisers aren't usually sealed at the edge, so if cleaning fluid migrates to the rim it can get into the inner polymer layer. I guess high humidity could affect the material via the same route. B+W's expensive 'Käsemann' polarisers do have edge sealing, and so should avoid this problem.</p>

<p>I like and still use it - it's light, a little faster than some of the wider range zooms at 70mm, and seems sharp to me. No, it's not good with straight lines at the wide end, though OK from about 24mm (if you have the 10-20 in your bag for the wide stuff this may not be an issue). Don't know if the distortion is any worse than Nikon's other 18-x lenses - the 16-85 is well regarded, but with a street price of around £440 GBP, it's 3x the price.</p>

<blockquote> <p>And how would you stop piracy of that version? Before CC, 60% of the Adobe users were running pirated copies of PS. Although it was initially cracked, CC now appears to have succeeded in stopping piracy. So unless you have a solution, it's not going to be a good situation for Adobe.</p> </blockquote> <p>Ah, I see it now A lifetime subscription for every user is the only conceivable way to combat piracy! Adobe really had no choice.</p> <p>An appropriate Google search gives me this in the second hit:</p> <p>"Here comes the next version of the awesome tool created by [deleted]. Last version 1.06 had the ability to crack almost all the products of CC & CS Suites, but unfortunately did not work for the latest CC 2014 release done by Adobe. But this new version 1.1 released by [deleted] works for the latest CC 2014 too."</p>

<p>Oh dear, I think I'll need to use the <sarcasm> tag in future :-)</p> <p>I think the answer to the OP is that there's no great alternative. If there were, it would not be necessary to find one, since Adobe would never have dared to impose the subscription system in the face of serious competition from a product with a perpetual licence.</p>

<blockquote> <p>Someone obviously haven't used any of the Sony EVF cameras. If anything, it's the finders from APS-C DSLRs that's vastly inferior, not the other way round. (Yes I do own both types).</p> </blockquote> <p>I don't really mean EVFs (or rear LCDs), but optical finders, which have all but disappeared. It does baffle me why those that still exist are generally so poor - we know from the 35mm P&S era that even a small, cheap camera can have a decent finder. Are the designers worried that increasing the size of the optics by a couple of mm will impinge on valuable LCD real estate, or make the camera marginally larger? Apart from Leica (who don't even bother in their'cheaper' cameras) only Fuji seems to have realised there's still a market for these things, and have managed to combine a very nice optical finder with a decent EVF in their hybrid design.</p>

<blockquote> <p>Adobe had to have some line in the sand in terms of version'ing their products. If in 2 years there is a major upgrade where a current OS or hardware we use today becomes incompatible, that version has to be defined. So even if there is a subscription that will update itself regularly and with new features, we will still see major version updates presumably every year (until told otherwise ;-)</p> </blockquote> <p>So Adobe will be releasing periodic versions which will presumably receive no further updates once the new version becomes current, but will otherwise work perfectly well? If only there were some way of, say, paying a fixed fee that covered only that version, but would keep it running indefinitely without an eternal subscription! A radical idea, I know, and I expect the technology to implement is is still decades away, but one which Adobe should seriously consider. I imagine it would be quite popular with some of their customers...</p>

<p>I think there are two definitions:</p> <p>(1) I have a genuinely bad example of this lens, possibly because the manufacturer's QC is too lax, but probably because someone dropped it before I got it.</p> <p>(2) I have a typical example of this lens, but it doesn't live up to the hype on KR's site, or my rigorous handheld testing at 1/30s with an uncoated UV filter suggests it isn't 'critically sharp'.</p>

<p>We seem to have come full circle. Almost any non-SLR digital camera that bothers with a built-in viewfinder at all has a tiny peephole that is vastly inferior to typical P&S cameras from the 80s or 90s. The only exceptions I can think of are the Fuji X series and, of course, the Leica M cameras, which have finders that haven't evolved much since the 1954 M3 (arguably the first 35mm camera to have a really good finder).</p>

<p>In the rumourverse a 'D9300' body pitched above the D7x00 is mooted. Time will tell.</p>

<blockquote> <p>Any advice?</p> </blockquote> <p>Simply place a small electronic flash or exposure meter (with batteries) in the accessory shoe :-)</p>

<blockquote> <p>Though if Canon really does get around to a 7D refresh, that'll stir things up a bit.</p> </blockquote> <p>Yes, would love to see some tough competition encouraging Nikon to make he best and most versatile 'semi-pro' camera they can for the money, rather than worrying about cannibalising sales of their own single digit models. This is the sort of situation that gave us models like the D300 and D700 in the first place.</p>