walterh

<p>Robert in the way that the older f1.4 is really 1.6 or so?</p>

 

<p>When I played with the D7000 at the Photokina I noticed that AF was noticably slower than what I am used to from my D3 (which is probably as fast as the D300 but that is my speculation).<br /> Now the cameras that were available were all fitted with a consumer zoom lens. This could slow down the AF speed (there was good light available).<br /> The cameras were slow in focusing the lens not necessarily in finding the correct focus. So perhaps the D700 does not supply much power to the lens motor?</p>

<p>BTW: It might be of interest that the camera was very quiet when shooting - the sound was also less harsh than D3 and D700.<br>

At first I was not certain because of the high noise level at the Photokina hall. But after some shooting I was more certain that this is the case. Several photographers near me got the same impression. For those who want a quiet camera try to look into this but make certain you can verify this.</p>

 

<p>Your image is out of focus. Focus is way off.<br>

The focus plain is in front of the face - you can see a few hair on the very left in focus and sharp.</p>

<p>Play around with manual focus and AF. Is there a beep to confirm focus in one of the settings? This can help in some situations.</p>

<p>Do you have the possibility in the D40 to select a focus point indicator in the viewfinder for AF and for the green light indicating focus is at that point OK?</p>

<p>I cannot see what the lens was from the exif data but in this particular case you might have been too close for the lens to focus. Check what the closest focus is for that lens at the particular zoom setting.</p>

<p>For further testing use a tripod if available and shoot a stable scene like houses with some depth and points of interest that are easy to focus on (take a note there) so one can detect if the focus plane of the sensor is what should be in focus.</p>

<p>I am certain we can figure this one out so do not despair :-)</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>BTW, it looks like the D7000 does not have the AF-ON button. Apparently that is an issue for some people. I do not use the AF-ON button unless I need to foucs in live view mode.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>I checked this at the Photokina.<br>

The Exposure lock button of the D7000 can be programmed to act as an AF-on button.</p>

<p>I checked since I dislike different AF-on activations between bodies. I could show you some of the reasons ^^ :-)</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Zach I did not see any D7000 with a grip. There was a big circle with about a dozen D7000.</p>

<p>People at the Nikon booth at the Photokina said End of October here in Germany.<br>

Those people were not the Nikon people but the people visiting Nikon :-)<br>

But the Nikon people did not object but said "likely".</p>

<p>I just handled the D7000 today at the Photokina and must say it feels like a small edition of a pro camera.<br>

The body appears well built and very solid. Something that cannot be taken from internet photos.</p>

<p>AF seemed a bit slow (compared to my D3) but that could be due to the consumer zoom lenses that were attached to the bodies within my reach.</p>

<p>(Even though I went there today in the morning the crowds were immense, not only at Nikon but everywhere. I had to wait about 15 minutes to get near a D7000. If this keeps this way to the weekend it will be the Photokina with most visitors ever.)</p>

<p>Back to the D7000. It is as small and light as expected but fits well into my hands that are used to the D3.</p>

<p>The Nikon people at the Photokina apparently were not allowed to comment on the IQ. They appeared especially resistent to the one million questions about dynamic range, high ISO capabilities in comparison to the D300 and D700. The answer always was that it will be very good and details should be taken from "test reports that will appear soon all over".</p>

<p>If the IQ is near that of the D300s one must find a special application to find a reason and buy a D300 instead of this camera. If one wants to speculate the D300s may be the next body to find a replacement. but of course we do not speculate here :-)</p>

<p> </p>

<p>For a home studio you might look for a used studio tripod. With a little luck you might get one of the big ones with a large diameter central column and a three leg base with wheels. Quite heavy and you may need to buy local for that reason.<br>

A new Sachtler would be out of price range but even a 30 year old type might do better than a new carbon Gitzo. No need to carry it far^^. I once obtained one really ugly used for cheap and needed a day to clean it but it worked very well because of heavy ancient cast iron design.<br>

In a studio you need a different tripod than on top of a mountain :-)</p>

 

<p>Exactly Joseph - if there is a lot of light (and one typical case where one runs out of dynamic range is clear sky and sun) a series of bracket shots takes very little time and eliminates a lot of problems in alignment for HDR.</p>

<p>I do not know what it would help you to know how I shoot but since you want to know here it is:<br>

I do not care how pretty the image on the LCD image looks but I need as much information on the histogram and blinking highlight indication. I therefore set in camera settings to give a fairly good representation of the RAW data. Zooming in I evaluate focus and DOF and have very slight sharpening set in camera.</p>

<p>For RAW conversion I use Adobe ACR that could not care less about in camera settings but allows me to apply my own presets for typical shooting conditions depending on camera type and ISO as well as camera profiles.<br>

Since we talk about matter of personal taste I also like black and green olives and like anchovies but should not eat these for health reasons. :-)</p>

 

<p>Michel the sealed lenses make a lot of sense in rain.<br>

In constant humidity no lens can keep the humidity out of the camera body.<br>

I guess it is hard to predict when there will be dripping water or just humidity .-)</p>

<p>So if you can afford the new lenses and sealed pro bodies go for it.</p>

<p>I used a D70 (not pro and not sealed) and a number of older and new lenses on several occasions in fog forest with daily rainfall.<br>

Humidity was saturated for many hours every day. I could often not shoot because lenses, mirror and sensor were fogged even though pretty much at ambient temperature. So I had to find a way to dry the surfaces and to warm the camera or find a small spot with sun since I did not want to wipe the sensor. I was surprised to learn how well the equipment worked. </p>

<p>Whenever there was some sunshine and a spot to spread out the gear all equipment got a few hours of drying time. I had one hour of electricity in the evenings and a hair dryer for short warming and drying.</p>

<p>My respect for the simple D70 grew from day to day.<br>

I expect that a better pro equipment would be even more robust. But sometimes conditions are so bad that even pro equipment would not survive. If you loose it at some point it will also be pro-money lost^^.</p>

 

<p>My color enhancer are two sliders in Adobe Camera RAW: "Saturation" and "Vibrance".<br>

"Color enhancer" - as a filter (?) sounds good - does it do anything?</p>

<p>There are reasons to use color temperature compensating filters but unless you are an expert you do not need one. If you are an expert you teach us here and do not need any advice :-P</p>

<p>Seriously I see good reasons to use a pol filter.<br>

But: a pol filter that alters colors may be of use as a second filter to a neutral pol filter if you do want to spend less time in post processing (one mouse click). Typically it is a sign of good advertisement (perhaps too good).</p>

 

<p>Jim if you set focus and exposure to manual then these will stay the same. Make certain that you do not have auto ISO on because this could still change ISO even if exposure is set to auto.<br>

Mirror lockup will have to be for each individual image, the mirror will come down between shots.<br>

I do not remember for certain about the D200 and mirror lock up but at least there will be a delay for the mirror if there is no mirror lock. But you can look it up in the manual.</p>

<p>Do not attempt any repair :-)<br>

As Michael said -send it to Nikon.</p>

<p>Owen if you do landscapes and manual metering worked for you for a long time then go ahead and continue with the way that worked, especially if you want to do jpg from the camera.</p>

<p>Just set everything to manual in your camera and that excludes auto anything (like auto D-lighting) since anything auto is out of your control. Measure light with your light meter and set A and S to your estimate from your "Bio-Computer". A trained photographer will do better any day than matrix metering unless you shoot action.</p>

<p>You can get a lot of help from a modern camera by shooting bracket series. I often shoot 3 images with +- 0.3 whenever dynamic range is small up to 5 or even 7 shots at +- 0.7 if the dynamic range is large. Storage space is cheap and this way you will always get a perfect exposure.<br>

Your only switch from slide film will be a little bit of fine tuning to get to jpg shooting.<br>

There is no reason to use all the high-tech gimmicks if your system worked well for decades :-)</p>

<p>You would still have to do some in camera settings for say contrast, sharpening color saturation etc that will modify the in camera processing. That will take some time to optimize.<br>

Happy shooting.</p>

 

<p>OK if you are only shooting *.jpg from the camera ignore my post, continue if you shoot RAW.</p>

<p>Please keep exposure and processing apart.<br>

To be certain if highlights are blown (overexposure) you have to look at the raw data using a dedicated software that can evaluate the raw data or a RAW converter that will do so reliably.<br>

Otherwise the way your exposure looks depends on the RAW converter and especially its settings.<br>

I use Adobe Camera RAW 6.2 for conversion. It will show clipping of individual channels and this is fairly reliable. If there is no clipping but the image looks too bright exposure will be at best (exposure to the right). If this is the case you did not loose any information in the highlights and get the least amount of noise in the dark parts of the image.<br>

If this image without clipped highlights looks too bright and overexposed (which is not the case in the raw data) simply turn down brightness and or play with exposure, contrast, saturation, black point, camera profile etc until you get the look you like best.</p>

 

<p>If you need AF then go for an AF lens.<br>

If you need AF then chances are you also need to shoot handheld.<br>

If you shoot handheld chances are that the resolving power of a lens is not the limiting factor but camera chake and camera movement like panning.<br>

-> A well focused image taken with a Nikkor 20mm AFD lens without camera shake is better than a defocused shaken image take with a Zeiss (or any other brand) image :-P That is "better" of course unless you are going for a strong artistic "environmental shot from the hip effect".</p>

<p>If you print small, chances are that your ability in post processing, sharpening and size reduction are more important than the resolving power of a lens you use.</p>

<p>A lot of reasons not to get the 21mm Zeiss? Indeed but if you want one of the best lenses near 20mm that money can buy go for it ^^. Excellent resolving power and rendition together with little distortion is what you can expect. You just need to know how to use it.</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>What happens is that after my shot, the meter will jump and I have to readjust my settings.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You confused me. I do not follow.<br>

What settings do you readjust in 2) and 3) ?<br>

What does accurate exposure mean? By what criteria?</p>

<p>You are shooting in what mode?<br>

Must be P since aperture priority would keep aperture constant and shutter priority would keep exposure time constant?</p>

<p>Or are you saying you set everything manual but the camera changes settings from shot to shot?</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"As I would like to carry as few things as possible, I have the tendency to get the smaller one, knowing that it would take more of the camera-battery and perhaps that the flash isn't that strong."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Stefan it would not use the battery of the camera. So if you use a flash with smaller batteries you will have to carry replacement batteries in your bag. Makes the flash smaller but you will still have to carry the extra weight unless you only need a few flash actuations.<br>

I use a flash similar to the one in your first quote. There are a large number of different brands offered near 90 euro- all look very similar and probably are from the same source. These "ring" flashes are not really ring flashes but contain two tubes. When i bought my flash unit it gat a poor contact and misfired occasionally. For 90 Euro a good deal but do not expect a pro-equipment for the low price. I recommend to buy local if possible.</p>

<p>Well at the same camera to object distance the magnification of an imaged object is also smaller when shot with a wide angle lens compare to the case when shot with a tele lens .-)</p>

<p> </p>

<p>It is not only the use of a tripod that counts.<br>

At wider aperture you get less DOF. Well often you want as much as possible depth of focus but on the other hand it is often required to isolate your object from the background and this is when you want to shoot with a larger aperture to get less DOF :-)<br>

Of course the difference in price makes the decision easier.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>The AFS images look slightly brighter.</p>

<p>That would be a good reason to upgrade -> for a brighter future :-)</p>

<p>Seriously - does the AFS offer any advantages over AFD in focus precision wide open or in AF speed?<br>

That would be the only reason I can see right now to prefer the newer lens (besides the obvious possibility for manual override AF).</p>

<p>I use a "Phottix GPS" without any problems or complains.</p>

 

<p>Mikhail the light metering by your camera is different.<br>

If you expose with the two lenses at same aperture but different time the result must be different. And this is what you get. It is that simple.</p>

<p>The obvious problem here is that the camera decides that different exposures are needed. We all do not know what matrix metering does exactly but what we know is that matrix metering "figures" out what might be the best exposure for a given situation. Even slight changes can influence this "thinking" process. Your camera decides that different exposures are needed for the two different lenses even though you think it should not.<br>

Matrix metering is not a simple process like using a hand held light meter. Some sort of "artificial intelligence" is involved. Sometimes it may be too much "intelligence" :-P</p>

<p>To compare if the lenses act differently try an exposure with a fixed aperture and fixed exposure time (set this in manual mode and keep ISO constant).<br>

Any difference that shows up will be due to differences between the lenses.</p>

<p>PS: Are you certain that matrix metering was used for shooting with both lenses? Is the Zeiss lens chipped?</p>

<p>For birds you might want at least 400mm but you know that :-) At first look this would be a major improvement.</p>

<p>I would let go of the 80-400 first.</p>

<p>For action shooting the new 70-200 would be nicer than your older two ring zoom but the IQ of your current lens is not bad at all: slight improvement but depends on the major use. Reading too many reviews? ^^<br>

I personally would keep and wait for the big money to replace the 80-400 with a 400 or 500 prime.<br>

Don't listen to me though I am not a bird shooter since 20 years ^^.</p>