curritch

Most reputable hardware vendors update their drivers to be compatible with new OS's. Those that don't won't get my future business.

 

I doubt that I will ever be in the market for a new film scanner. But if so it will NOT be a Nikon.

I don't know Nikon's policy of late but in the early days Nikon was notorious about not updating scanner drivers for new OS's.

 

I bought an early Nikon 35mm film scanner that ran on, I believe, Win 3.1. When Win 95 came out the scanner wouldn't work and Nikon never updated the driver.

 

I would have thought that they would be doing better today. But maybe not. That's not a great motivation to buy a Nikon scanner.

Dori it's on the bottom of the camera on the far end opposite the battery compartment. You have to punch with a paper clip or something like that.

Have you tried the "hard" reset?

All electronic devices have a failure rate and expected life. I don't have a number but the expected life of a memory card, PROPERLY USED, is probably many times the expected life of the mechanical parts of the camera.

 

In practice the probability of a memory failure is more a function of abuse than anything else. Damaged contacts and static electrical discharges probably cause far more failures than the inherent failure rate of the device.

 

Memory cards are really inexpensive now. If you are getting weird results swap cards and see if the weirdness goes away or stays with the camera. Hopefully it will go away. That's by far your most desirable outcome.

Sorry I forgot to add that my camera is the D50.

I prefer to use the "single area" mode for AF. I find that in the P, A, S or M

camera modes I can select "single area" AF mode and the camera will retain that

selection until I change it. In the Auto mode, though, the camera defaults to

the "closest subject" AF mode anytime that another camera mode is selected and

then returned to Auto. As a result I sometimes get out-of-focus shots until I

realize that I'm not in the "single area" AF mode anymore.

 

Is there any way to make "single area" the default AF mode in the Auto camera mode?

I have a D50 and I've been using the 50mm/1.8 lens left over from my 6006 days quite a bit lately for low light situations. With some success in my opinion. Attached is a photo of great grandkid Catherine (I'm an old F__t) taken today with the D50/50mm combo in subdued interior lighting. The D50 was in the P mode with ISO=1600. The image data says that the shutter was at 1/100 and the aperture was at F5.

 

So my input is that, unless the FOV of the 50mm is a problem, then go with the 50mm/1.8. It works well.<div></div>

I'm certainly not an expert but it doesn't seem to me that VR is intended for point-and-shoot "grab shot" situations. It is useful, however, for somewhat static scenes where either slow shutter speed and/or long focal length makes it difficult to hand-hold the camera.

Brad. When I first tried to use my 55-200 VR lens I was too fast with the shutter release and couldn't see any effect. You have to depress the shutter release and hold it bit before the VR kicks in. On my lens you can definitely see the effect through the viewfinder at 200mm hand-held.

I was interested in the answers here but I haven't seen one.

 

Virtually every lens today comes with a lens hood.

 

I know that if I'm attempting to photograph toward the sun then I need a lens hood to block the direct sun as best it can.

 

But what other uses make sense? To protect the lens physically? I've been taking pictures for about 60 years now and I've never seen fit to spend even one copper penny for a piece of plastic to protect the lens.

 

So other than to block the sun when taking pictures toward the sun is there any other purpose for a lens hood?

Thanks Lex. That indeed does work.

I assume that the exif data is what Nikon PictureProduct calls "shooting Data". If so I don't see any listing of D50 shutter activations either.

Ronald I've read a bit about NX and it does seem to have several functions unique to NEF files. And it apparently has a built in capability to always preserve the original NEF file.

 

I'm not a pro (maybe not even a good amateur) and I mostly shoot in the JPEG mode with the D50. The only times I shoot NEF are on very special occasions. So I'm having trouble justifying another $120 application for my needs.

 

Photoshop Elements has the capability to adjust exposure and white balance of NEF files prior to entering the normal editor and that seems powerful enough to me. Unless NX is just an inherently better photo app than PS Elements.

 

I will appreciate any other words of wisdom.

I'm confused about NEF processimg with Picture Project 1.5. It seems to me that

once when a NEF file was opened an option came up change exposure and white

balance before doing anything else, much like Photoshop Elements does. Now it

immediately goes to the same editing capability provided for jpegs which doesn't

have exposure and white balance controls.

 

Is my memory bad or has my copy of Picture Project changed the way it operates?

If it's a brand new D40 with an obvious flaw then why not exchange it? That might be a slight hassle but not nearly the hassle of cleaning the sensor.

Boy I thought this thread was going to delve into politics there for a bit. I'm glad IT had the good sense to stay with photography.

Sorry I meant Brad's thoughts, not Anetta's.

I second Annetta's thoughts about CD/DVD backup. I have been backing up regularly on Mitsui Gold Archival CD's for several years now. I'm up to CD #44 at this point. When I exhaust my supply (of 100) I will switch to DVD's.

 

I personally have not found external hard drives to be very reliable. I'm on my third drive now in a period of 3-4 years. On the other hand I have plain old (not archival) music CD's purchased in the 70's/80's that still play fine. I'm convinced that with proper storage the Gold CD's will indeed last 100 years. Now whether you can purchase a compatible player in that time frame is another matter.

My grandson was married yesterday. I took a lot of photos with the D50 and the

18-70mm 3.5-4.5 DX lens. I was very satisfied with the results. The 18-70mm

seems almost matched to the internal flash of the D50. If you can frame a good

shot at 70mm then the internal flash does a pretty good job of exposing it. And

the auto focus worked very well even with low light.

 

But my highlight came when they trying to escape. I captured about nine

individual frames and five are shown here. All were in focus. I can't imagine

that I could have done anything like this with my old Canon AE-1 or Nikon 6006.<div></div>

My first attempts with the 55-200 DX VR were pretty awful. Until I learned to hold off until the VR function took hold.

 

But could it not be also that one lens is just better even though they are the same model number? Maybe you should swap lenses and/or cameras to zero in where the differences are.

This was not ballet but I recently took some pictures of our grandkids appearing in a production of "Annie" which has a lot of dance routines. I used my D50 and my 50mm/1.8 lens. The D50 was set for ISO 800 and shutter speed 1/100. No flash. The lens was set at f1.8. Lighting was stage lighting only. An example is attached.

 

My conclusion is that the 50mm/1.8 did pretty good. It's not long enough to capture close ups of individuals but it's so inexpensive that it should be the first lens considered.

 

I bought, but have not yet received, a Tamron 90mm/2.8 macro. I'm hoping it will be fast enough while proving a better close up capability.<div></div>

Thanks for the inputs. It looks like it would be hard to go wrong here.

DB. All I want to know is how did you survive that jump and what did you do with all the money?

Paul I must not know how to do a search. I did a search but all that surfaced pertained to Nikon lenses. Do you search for each lens type individually?