laichungleung

NIKON NIKKOR 300MM AF-S 2.8 D II the lightest version as far as I know.  It's apparently a used one, I wasn't aware of the stop screw even I am a long time F mount user so that's very very embarrassing.  It kind of happened before but it was OK with the F mount D4s, perhaps the metal wasn't that soft or it wasn't much torque I used.  In normal circumstances, I hold the lens and twist to mount and unmount but since the 300mm is kind of big so I twist the body and my brain couldn't quite adjust so it jammed when it was twisted in the opposite direction and w/out the stop screw to stop it from happening.  I have "fixed" or experimented with fixing some Nikkor lenses but never curious enough to know what that little screw does.  I paid $250 for this lesson 

It is a Z 9.

I should have said it's a FTZ II adapter

My F mount 300mm missed the stop screw so long story short, the 300mm destroyed the FTZ adapter aperture lever.  since I don't have a spare one or find any picture online I ask if any member can share what a normal lever would look like?  My other F mount cameras have the lever but they are spring loaded.  The FTZ one is motor driven and I believe they aren't the same or how they are installed.   Any close up of it with or dissembled from the adapter is greatly appreciated.  In an attempt to fix it I might have straightened it too much so it doesn't actually work.

With this aperture lever missing, all the AF-S would work somewhat but at the min aperture, f/22 or whatever the smallest and extreme HI ISO as a result.

I forgot why I asked in the first place.  I think people just talk about fast duration to freeze action, it's true but only if you can shut down the ambient.

On 12/30/2021 at 1:12 PM, charlie_groh said:

I do alot of "sports" work, sometimes daylight (which is bonus and delux) and other times at football venues at nite. The latter is most challenging equipment-wise by far. All that said, a flash is not in my kit and I don't believe I'll *ever* use flash on my shoots. Even indoors (gyms, basketball venues) I wouldn't even think of it. Most indoor venues frown upon, or even ban, flash. Outside, distance and the ability to move quickly, not to mention the distraction to performers/athletes, make flash of any kind not advisable. A mantra amongst sports shooters is to get as much shutter as you possibly can. At a dimly lit high school football stadium, for example, I might shoot 24,000 ISO in order to get 1/1000th at f4 (utilizing a Nikon D5 with the 200-400 f4). YMMV in the activity you shoot, and of course venues, but bottom line, for me at least, shutter rules.

with modern cameras having excellent high ISO performance.  Shooting without additional light is definitely possible or preferable. I did one time sub my works for some online school shooting platform.  The critique was to show samples of indoor basketball using strobes.  I have no doubt that on some NBA or pro levels there are lights mounted on the rafters high up to light the players ... 

At some point I was watching quite a bit of YT on flash duration, but most of them don't mention about ambient.  I think no matter how fast your flash duration if you can't shut off the ambient or overpower the ambient, that you won't get crisp image.  That's if you can get a black frame without flash then adding a flash with fast duration will definitely crisp the image.  But if ambient leaks in, I don't think a fast duration matters at all. 

I have a couple of Cell II-N for my Nikon camera and 120J strobe.  It triggers fine except for the occasional misfires (fires without me press anything).   Anyway, I don't need TTL as I am just using some Sunpak 120J or other generic flashes.  My question is Would the Cells II-N as a transmitter attached to a Nikon camera, able to trigger a Cells II-C act as a receiver attached to any flash or strobes and be able to do Hypersync.  With a pair of Cells II-N I have no issue doing hypersync at full flash power up to 1/8000s.

My experience is that.  If you are using external power only without and AA batteries in the compartment, then no matter what settings you on, the flash will fire full blast.  When you have the batteries in the compartment and attach the external power source then things work as expected, auto or fraction powers.

Pay attention to the battery.

If it swells, stop using it. The danger is, if it swells too much, it could get STUCK in the camera. And if you can't get it out, it means an expensive trip to Nikon service to remove it.

In school, one class was using a battery that they had to "pry" out of the camera. I told the teacher to replace the battery, or one day it will be STUCK in the camera.

I have experience with battery growing fat over the years, it was the one with the macbook pro. initially i didn't know it was the battery, the trackpad just not responsive as it sat above the bulging battery. And slowly or surely it renders the trackpad useless and the bottom getting fatter and fatter. In the end I replaced with some 3rd party battery. And it's a success, sure the battery doesn't last quite as long but what do you expect anyway... For camera batteries, I haven't experience the budge, not yet. Hope never will.

What a coincidence, the battery issue you experienced has happened to me lately as well around probably the same time indeed (a month ago), exactly stopped charging and shown on my D300s 70% then 68% after another couple of charges within 24 hours, using the same nikon genuine charger 18a which should have nothing to do with battery capacity under charging but only matters of charging time (the higher capacity the longer time to get fully charged in 100%). I immediately sensed that this off-brand battery itself is defect and returned it without a second thought. Next day I still acquired a third-party battery by Kastar 2650 mAh (even higher than the 2200 one I returned, the same as yours) which I had one some time ago (brand wise) without any issue so I trusted it, turned out this Kastar one is just charged full in 100% and working properly as expected and about the same price as the 2200 one. Hope this helps for you to know what to do with yours.

my D700 is my backup now, sort of. So I will see. But it's good to know in the world of 3rd party batteries, not all of them are made bad, some are just better than others. I have just another off brand battery for my D810, which discharges mush faster but otherwise oK for all the years I use it, it came with the camera I bought used on eBay.

I can't speak about particular 3rd party brands, but the En-El3e batteries I had for my D700 were a mixture of genuine Nikon and 3rd party ones. The 3rd party ones nearly all claimed a higher capacity than the OEM batteries, but didn't deliver any more shots-per-charge. However, the 3rd party batteries nearly all lasted as long as the OEM ones.

 

I had one 3rd party battery suddenly go bad after several months use, but that was a one in 6 occurrence. All the others were fine, and still are - I dragged the D700 out of retirement recently and the old 3rd party batteries that I charged and fitted to it were still good.

 

Personally, I think you have to weigh the substantial saving over OEM batteries against maybe a shorter useable life. But if you can get 2 or 3 off-brand batteries for the same price as one OEM, then the economics definitely come down in favour of the off-brand product.

 

Having said that, there are probably some 3rd party brands that are to be avoided. And I also see that some of the 3rd party labels I've bought in the past, and been satisfied with, have disappeared from the market.

 

P. S. There's also a strong possibility that any En-El3e batteries on sale now are old stock. That battery type hasn't been current (sorry!) for many years.

you said it.

I doubt I can get a brand new good ENEL3E at this point. I never ever expected a 3rd party battery be any close to the original. But this is a bit too far off when brand "new," which could be anything but ... in the beginning it says 70% then stopped charging, now at 50% it stopped charging. I have no confidence in them whatsoever. One of my genuine nikon battery suddenly died, the order one even after years of usage still says 0 meaning brand new. Actually alll of my genuine nikon batteries say so. it's crazy.

I can't quit my D700, it's biased probably even after I got my D4s, I think the D700 gives me better pictures, sharper with better clarity. The D4s shoots faster that's it.

I have a Nikon genuine MH-18a and an EN-EL3e battery that absolutely stopped charging. So I went ahead and bought 2 third party batteries. But the two new batteries stopped charging at some 70% or most recently 47%. I read that % from my D700 menu. The genuine EN-EL3e battery is listed at 1500mAh while the 3rd party ones at 2200mAh, both rated at 7.4V. I still have one functioning EN-EL3e with 2 functioning MH-18a, the genuine battery charges up in the charger no problem at all.

So my question is would the increased battery mAh prevents it from charging up in the original charger? Or I suspect the batteries are just simply bad. Like really bad and the mAh have nothing to prevent it from charging up if only it's normal or up to spec.

I have no knowledge of electricity. I know the higher mAh is a good thing because it stores more power and last longer in theory or when it's really up to spec.

Thanks.

I got this model unfortunately it does not flash. It powers up if I hook it up to my Godox pb960. All the buttons seem to work except the test flash button, or when I PC sync it with my camera. It even reports under exposure (of course) if I use auto as the flash never goes off. Do you know if it's an "easy" fix like opening it up? I am not handy at all. The bulb works even the casing felll off as I put it into my sunpak 120J and it works ...

Does anyone know how to open this thing? Or any diagram online? Thanks.

thanks all.

i shoot some sports, mainly bike racings. I tend to add flash to add some spark to the pictures otherwise I feel like the lighting is too flat, i.e. if action is close and I am shooting with a wide angle like 16-35. Mostly I shoot at a low shutter speed (1/30s) and small aperture (f/8 or smaller), if front curtain curtain sync, the ghosting appears in the front, if rear sync, the ghosting appears in the end of the action which is usually more natural and desirable. So that's rear curtain sync.

My question is actually on flash duration on action shots during daylight. I have seen numerous youtube video extolling the merits of fast flash duration which I have no way of testing in all scenarios as I don't own any 200w/s strobes with fast flash duration so I can only imagine....I tend to agree and from my limited experience, if I were to shoot in broad daylight with some below 100w/s flash, there is no way I can use flash duration to stop any action, that's based on flash duration to produce crisp images, instead I always use slow shutter and small aperture to pop the action. If I were to freeze any action I shoot 1/1000 or faster sans flash to freeze the action. So I just don't quite get it when people say flash duration to freeze actions, yeah I mean if you can totally overcome the ambient then sure but if I were to shoot outdoor, a long flash duration plus hypersync, i.e. using the camera's 1/500 or faster shutter speed would freeze the action...But I really have no experience ever having a power strobe with fast duration shooting action in broad daylight.

i use a pair of Sunpak 120J from eBay. One is powered by a Godox PB960 and the other by the "original" pack with new NiMh cells ordered online. I want to upgrade to Lumedyne mostly for the challenge and irrational yearnings. I bought a qflash model T but it was AS IS and dead on arrival. So right now I am looking at Lumedyne, I have no soldering iron nor do I know anything about electricity.

When I bought the modified battery pack for the Sunpak 120J I got one Universal Smart Charger 0.6A to 1.2A. I haven't used the battery for a long time and it no longer charges. The guy told me to wake it up, and I have no idea how to wake it up.

Anyway thanks for the information. I read online it seems like Sanyo people trust.

If I Google Lumedyne re-cell I also got results of what looks like dynamite cells...So it's out there it's just that I don't know how to go about doing it. I guess I just have to do it do it.

Sorry about the rambling and thanks again.

I have the exact same problem you describe. It affects only the main command dial (on the back). I've tried giving it a bit more use and burried the camera in rice to absorb any humidity it might have inside. That helped a little, I did notice that, but it's still far from perfect.

I just want to add that I am having the same problem with my Nikon F5 a couple of years back. The front wheel is fine, it's the thumb wheel that's giving me the problem.

<p> <a title="45930033 by rnj97, on Flickr" href=" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4136/4880334430_eb95224c28_z.jpg" alt="45930033" width="640" height="424" /></a><br>

Canon New F1, Canon FD 50mm f/1.8</p>

<p>I know you guys just want me to return it so you guys can buy it. Ha ha. Just kidding.<br>

I don't have a lot of experience with lenses new or old, but especially old. So this is a first for me. A lot of time, I read bubbles really don't matter, that's from a picture taking end product perspective, like a real photographer or something. But I am not. I care about how the gear looks, yeah that's kind of pathetic to some but I guess that's me. I still have time to think it over to keep or return. The pictures don't look (on my blog if you dare to see ) all that bad but who knows, everything is kind of relevant. Yeah, basically the whole area is full of bubbles of some sort.<br>

Thanks guys.</p>

<p>Man, I am sorry for all the confusion I inadvertently caused (common vs. normal, 1:2 vs. f/1.2). I just tried to write out the lens name like Nikon has it on the lens, which is "Nikon NIKKOR-N Auto 1:2." There are probably more than one way of expressing the f-stop ... <br>

Re Mr. Posner, I thought I needed a Nikkor 28 f/1.4 but my bank account doesn't think so even I am more than happy to shoulder the weight. Let me check out B&H see if there is anything I want.<br>

Thanks.</p>

<p>I re-read my original post, I don't think I consider that normal either, I was asking how common or prevalent this bubbling thing is for this lens. OKAY. Let me try to attach one if not two pictures of the bubbles. I guess I just want to gauge how common it is or does it make sense at all to find another one if it's prevalent. Or should I expect something a bit better even it's graded Bargain--I was hoping, as irrational as it sounds, Bargain means Excellent if I got lucky. It probably wouldn't do anything negatively for the picture as far as I can see but psychologically I guess it has an effect--I am just totally irrational. Thanks.</p>

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<p>I got this at bargain rating and it certainly lives up to its rating, very well used. No surprise on the positive side. I have found there are a whole cluster of bubbles inside the lens elements. It's not one or two or three but a whole bunch like innumerous. Three of them are kind of big. The front and end elements have one or two very light scratches. My question is are the bubbles very common in this lens? If It's very common then I don't think it makes sense to ask for an exchange, the vendor makes no mention the bubbles at all. I took some shots and I don't think I can tell anything negative that's directly attributable to the bubbles or the scratch.<br>

I like to hear others' experience with this particular lens. The lens is I believe, AI'd and carries a series number 2939xx.<br>

Thanks.</p>

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