michael_millard

Infra-red light scatters just like any other light.

You can sometime "bounce" the ML-L3's signal off walls, floors, etc...

As it scatters, the intensity gets reduced, so of course, this "idea" doesn't always work.

Joseph's answer passes the "sniff-test", but I would just add that with many of the new battery technologies (Lithium-Ion, Nickel Metal Hydride, etc...) it is often "difficult" to tell how much charge is left in them.

That's because the newer battery technologies are optimized to provide a nice, high, stable voltage as long as they can, then they usually drop off like a rock. (i.e., you can't just put a volt meter on it and see how much juice is in it. It might die 500 shots later, or 2 shots later.)

Now of course, with some fancy electronics, one can "guesstimate" the amount of charge left (and no doubt Nikon is doing this), but from battery-to-battery, camera-to-camera, it's all pretty relative.

It's a little like those old gas gauages on cars in the 70's. Shows a 1/4 tank, but you better fill up or you'll be walking!

Incidentally, the reverse is also true. (i.e., It's also "difficult" to tell when the battery is fully-charged.) Most charger circuits will monitor the battery temperature during the charging cycle and relate this to a known power curve for the device. Note that this would be done in the exernal battery charger, not the camera itself.

As far as swapping out the D70 power board, it is almost certainly in charge (no pun intended) of monitoring the battery voltage during use. If fooled into thinking the battery is about to expire, it might very well shutdown camera operations prematurely to prevent loss of data. (In effect, the same "difficulty" in reverse.)

It follows then that the longer the camera is turned on, the better the camera will get at "knowing" how much charge is left in the battery. It simply has more curve data to work with. Of course, I've never had cause to open the D70 battery charger to see what's under the hood..... But it's likely along the lines as described above. (Measuring voltage and charge vs. time.)

For what it's worth....

Oh, and I typically get 300-400 shots on my D70 now. (When I shoot that much, which isn't that often.)

The battery is about a year old.

Actually Brian, I believe the world is more appropriately described as an oblate spheroid. (Not "round"). But if you have the auto-image rotation feature turned on, or you have a lens with really bad pincushioning?, prolate spheroid would also work. Ha!!

....I think Jay's reply is getting to me.???

You can also try the two-button reset.

My guess is the firmware initialization subroutine will probably unlock the mirror? Unless the programmers were sloppy.... which I doubt.

You've got nothing to lose... Give it a try. Good luck.

Pat, I have (2) SB800's and love 'em.

The Nikon CLS system and SB800 makes a very accurate flash setup.

Anyone know how to actually attach the fifth battery??

Not that I need fast recycle, but it was not intuitively obvious (to me at least) how to remove the little plastic door without breaking it.... (So, I just use 4 batteries)

The manual was no help.

You realize of course that the Bamboo Viper is not actually perched in a bamboo tree...?

Great shot, though!

Try the two-button reset. Can't hurt.

This will at least put the camera back to the way it was shipped from the factory (allowing you to forget about any control adjustments you may have made.) Not that you can make any in Auto Mode anyway.....

Good luck.

Two things:

First, I wish I had more time to waste this afternoon (instead of working!). I would definitely fake-in a nice RED tongue on that lizard pic and drive home the post-processing argument big time. (Ha!!)

But also, Daren's initial observation may be more than it seems:

Basically, there's a "signal", (i.e., quality image capability) buried in a mountain of "noise" (i.e., lots of photographs taken with the different lenses, and not necessarily under like conditions.)

As an engineer, I can certainly appreciate signal to noise problems. If you took a million Cannon-lens photographs and a million Nikon-lens photographs, eventually, you could weed out (cancel out) things like photographer skill, lighting, etc..., and settle?, perhaps?, on an objective measurement. You just need a big enough sample size.

That said, the resulting "signal-to-noise" ratio could be so small as to be essentially meaningless.

That Photoshop-ed red tongue on the other hand....

Could be the computer too. Possibly doing too many things in the background and not enough system resources to devote to audio playback.

Things to try: Do other PC-based files have this problem?

Are you downloading the files first, or trying to play them direct from the camera? (Sorry, unfamiliar with your camera, but be aware that generally, camera to PC interfaces can be pretty slow -- slow enough to cause this problem.)

Playback speed and sample rate should be detected automatically. In my experience, 16-bit, PWM 44.1 kHz is CD-Quality, (stereo), and 16-bit, PWM 22.05 kHz is used for mono. Not sure why others are quoting 32 kHz, but of course, any speed can be recognized. Some MP3 players go to 96 kHz, 128 kHz, or even higher.

But I rarely see anything 8-bit. (regardless of sampling rate).

Again, you probably can't adjust this on playback anyway.

I would suggest closing all open programs except the audio program and see if that helps.

And if your PC can't play anything back correctly (like a midi file, or something you surf off the net...) then that confirms something is wrong with the PC and not the camera. Good luck.

Jean,

I hear you. The crop factor really doesn't help much for a D70 walkabout. If I just take the kit lens, it seems there's always a shot or two that's just out of reach. And if I take the other lens (70-300), then most shots are way too close.

For now, if I don't know what I'm going to encounter and taking just ONE lens, I'll pack the kit lens. Otherwise, I take the whole pack which includes a couple SB800's, tripod, etc...)

And I agree with the 70-300 ED/G asessment. It's relatively inexpensive, has good AF action, not too bulky, and takes excellent pictures!

That said, the aforementioned AF-S DX ZOOM-NIKKOR 55-200mm f-4-5.6G ED ($249.00 at Adorama) is probably going to get a spot on my own wish-list. For a single lens trek, I think this might be a better choice on the D70 than the kit lens (unless you expect some wide angle opportunites, of course.)

In this month's issue of Electronic Products, there's a breakdown of

all the electronic components required to build the Nikon Coolpix

4300 digital camera. Might be a neat thing to check out if you're

ever interested in what's "under the hood".

See the link:

http://www.electronicproducts.com/whatsinside/viewteardown.asp?

filename=Nikon%5F4300%5Fweb%2Ehtml

-Michael

Many CF sockets are rated for 10,000 insertion cycles.

So under normal use, and if you're careful, it should last forever.

Flash memory erase cycle durability is about 100x that figure.

But remember, manufacturers have various ways to spec insertion & read/write cycles. A "failure" to them, might have no bearing on your enjoyment of the product. For example, if a single low-ordered bit on a CF card got "stuck", you might never notice. But the device still "fails" according to the manufacturer.

At some point, all that extra storage capacity is going to necessitate a spare battery for the camera, which defeats the argument for not having to carry spare CF cards...

My D70 for example, will only snap about 450 pictures (on average) before it want's a re-charge. So really, all I ever need is space for that.

Now when my vacation plans finally materialize - (they will, won't they!?), and I'm out in the bush for weeks on end, maybe a microdrive makes sense? But personally, if I were to invest $$$$ in memory storage, it would be an x-drive or something & I'd stick with the CF cards I already own.

I wonder if the CCD sensor "in-camera crop" is causing this to be more of a problem than it would be with a full-size 35mm imager (i.e., film)?

Is the smaller sensor size magnifying this "problem"? Leaving less room for focusing error.

I'll add my $.02 worth...

I just sent off an image file (jpg) to one of these online photo printers (www.ezprints.com, not that I'm plugging them...)

D70, JPG, Large Fine.

In fact, the pic I sent is the Alligator picture in my Photo.net gallery.

I ordered several sizes - the purpose of which was to "see" when the printed resolution started to go downhill. What follows is totally subjective, but I guess I have a somewhat discerning eye.

8 x 10 color glossy print - result: Perfection. Looked fantastic.

8 x 12 color gloosy print - result: same as above, only more of the picture was shown in the end product. i.e., less cropping.

11 x 14 color glossy print - result: Quite good and very acceptable to the untrained eye. There was just a hint that the resolution was starting to degrade. A trained eye could probably spot this readily, but your "average Joe" (friend, family, etc..) probably couldn't tell and would be happy to put it on display.

I did not print anything larger than 11x14 because the math pretty much told me that would be a waste of money.

So to recap: If you have a Nikon D70, good shots at Max JPG resolution look great at 8x12, and pretty damn good at 11x14 too.

I was satisfied with the "test" results, subjective as they are.

Someone also mentioned that delays were introduced if Noise Reduction was turned on in the menu (even if noise reduction isn't actually requried for the shutter speed in use).

I've not verified this with regard to the question at hand.

I use SB-800's and rarely (ever?) need to shoot repetitive flash.

But if someone knows or can verify this, I would appreciate knowing.

Michael

USB (as most of us know it) is tied to a computer.

No computer...... no transfer.

Communications must be device to a PC/Mac and vice versa.

Peer-to-peer is not possible.

There is movement to make USB peer-to-peer, at least a little bit.

A new USB-OTG ("USB On-The-Go") format was introduced in 2001, but is just now becoming popular. OTG cuts the cord to the computer.

Devices implementing USB-OTG can only talk to one USB device (and not very many are currently supported). Only 1 USB device can be connected and it won't "talk" to or through hubs either.

There are some portable products now coming on the market that implement USB-OTG for digital picture storage, but I personally prefer the ones that use CompactFlash.

I use a Bogen/Manfrotto tripod regularly with my D70 zooms and have never had this problem, even in moderate winds.

Tripod model 3036 with 3126 head.

I don't recall what I paid for this thing, but it wasn't necessarily cheap! But it's sturdy! I can attest to that!!

Of course, I used to use it for my spotting scope (1000mm f/11) so that explains it. I've since T-mounted the 1000mm to the D70 and a film minolta and still no problem.

I have to agree with the others.

Check the tripod first.

D70 "large" Lenses discussed in this post:

AF Nikkor 70-300mm D.

Meade 1000mm/F11 spotter scope (big, bulky, workable for the $$$, but not ideal by any stretch...)

With the difusser dome on, the SB-800 zoom head will indeed default to 14mm. This is normal.

And don't forget, if you want additional light scattering, you can always shoot with both the built-in wide flash adapter & difusser dome simultaneously.

Hey Dave,

If they happen to crop the wrong edge, you can always offer the "Tin", "Pewter", and "Pig Iron" packages.... at greatly reduced prices. Ha!

Have a nice weekend!

-Michael

I assume your daugher is generally unfamiliar with the camera.

Therefore, I would suggest:

1) Remove battery, turn on camera. Wait several minutes.

2) Insert new CF card. (Have her go new buy one locally)

3) Make sure camera is in Automatic mode.

4) Put the battery back in and turn the camera on. Wait a few seconds. See if flashing light goes out.

5) Perform a two-button reset. (Press the two buttons with the little green dots next to them. These buttons are the "BKT" button on the camera's rear upper left, and the metering mode button which is located near the on/off switch. (It's the one on the left, just behind the on/off switch.)

At this point, the camera should be back to the way you got it from Nikon.

Maybe she doesn't need a new CompactFlash card, but I assume she's visiting Paris and won't want to miss out. (vacation?) If so, the cost for a replacement CF card is inconsequential. It's possible the existing card is OK, or, even if it isn't, that you will be able to extract any pictures on in once she gets home.

Other than that, I'm afraid I can't be of much help.

The camera might really have something wrong with it that requires Nikon repair.(?)

Oh, one more thing... I assume you know that there's a "flashing" highlights mode when you are previewing pictures. Only the white parts of the picture flash (and even then, only if they are over-exposed). If this is the case, simply push the 4-way toggle button on the back of the camera to the left or right until the picture gets back to normal.

And if this is what your daughter is complaining about, the shutter will still release and she can still take her pictures. (They record OK, they just don't look right on the LCD).

If the little green light next to the CF card slot is what's blinking, the shutter probably won't release and she's missing out. (In which case, have her try steps 1-5 above.)

Anyway, hope this helps.

Good luck.

Michael

Did I understand this correctly?

Why can't digital cameras bracket multiple shots for exposure all in one shutter press?

I suspect the bias (or the equivalent thereof?) on the CCD imager is adjusted according to the EV (bracket program). If that is so, then no digital camera should be able to bracket say 3 or 4 shots with a single press of the shutter.

The CCD bias having been adjusted just prior to each press.

It's a guess, but it seems logical.

Otherwise, if you exceeded the gain (limit) of the imager (i.e., too much light hitting it), how else could one compensate other than lowering the CCD gain (electronic sensitivity), or adjusting the camera/lens/scene to reduce the incident light?

Obviously anything that doesn't affect the CCD imager settings themselves probably could be done post-processing. Such as Noise Reduction, JPG conversion, and the like.

With an ultra-fast CCD & electronics, maybe it's possible to emulate the requested feature??

When I first purchased my D70, the salesman was very careful to point out that one could accidentally bend the pins in the bottom of the CompactFlash slot by inserting the card wrong. (Personally, I don't see how this is possible...?) But it might be worth a look with a small flashlight.

If the pins are damaged, that would seem to explain it.

Either way, still looks like a trip to the Nikon repair center is in the works...

Good luck. Sorry to hear of your troubles.

And don't forget:

It's possible to run out of battery before you run out of storage (CF or HD).

Some day (when I get really bored), maybe I'll derive that equation for how many fully-charged batteries to take relative to total session anticipated CF/HD storage required. (Obviously, for an extended photo trip.)

...not today, though.