michael_millard

Sounds like the answer, but I'm curious.

Will the D-70 still release the shutter?

Who wrote this camera software?

If there's a switch to sense flash up/down position, obviously raise when needed, but release the shutter when not-raised detected, and in Auto mode. Hummmmm.

Tim -

This is going to sound completely stupid but try it:

Move, or copy NkvBrows.exe to another directory and run it.

I can not explain why this (sometimes) works.

(If it doesn't work, you can always move it back and no harm done.)

Good luck!

I know this is a photo forum, but let me add my $0.02 worth on the merits of USB devices. (Which I do find useful, by the way)

USB is not a peer-to-peer network (so be aware of that if all you're looking for is a portable image tank). USB requires an operating system, although in 2001, "USB On-The-Go" was introduced in a supplement to the 2.0 specification. USB On-The-Go defines a set of reduced capabilities for simple, stand-alone embedded devices that operate with a single USB peripheral. A USB OTG device will also plug into a computer, just like a normal USB device. That's probably what being used on many of the portable devices mentioned in this thread.

Otherwise, you're going to need to lug your PC around, which pretty much defeats the whole purpose.

As for USB speed, three data rates are defined:

USB 1.x = Low Speed (LS) at 1.5 Mbps and Full Speed (FS) at 12 Mbps.

Note, (LS) is hardly ever seen.

USB 2.0 = High Speed (HS) at 480 Mbps, + all of the above for backwards compatibility.

You can tell which speed your hardware has by looking at the USB logo. Search online for the two main logo styles.

For comparison & reference, the much more capable FireWire (Apple's name for IEEE-1394), runs 400 Mbps. Note: A new IEEE-1394.b promises 3.2 Gbps (6x faster than today's FW). Firewire is "peer-to-peer", meaning peripherals can "talk" directly to each other as well as directing a single communication to multiple receivers simultneously. (And now you know why it's more expensive than USB...!)

As for power drain, it's complicated.

USB peripherals can draw power directly from the bus with some limits. The USB Standards define both bus-powered and self-powered USB devices. To simply this dicussion, USB "Hubs" can only deliver so much current (without voltage sag). A USB peripheral can be bus, host or hub powered up to 100mA, providing that all connected devices, taken together, meet certain constraints. A device that needs up to 500mA "may" be bus powered PROVIDED the operating system (and USB Host Controller) will allow it. Many battery-powered USB devices do not permit this. Then, it gets even more complicated with Power-down suspend rates, etc... I won't bore you with the details.

We actually looked at putting USB in one of our products, which explains how I know all this stuff. But it turns out you have to have a developers license, obtain a Vendor ID (for device enumeration), get a product ID to identify the peripheral to the operating system, etc.... Then you get the thrill of dealing with the Microsoft and Apple operating systems. Oh Joy! Turns out you can bypass a lot of this by using certain manufacturer's chips, but all-in-all, we decided it wasn't worth the trouble.

Hope you find all this useful, if a bit confusing.

Just remember, the "price" of flexibility is complexity.

Let's see.... Cp, Cq, Cr..

Aahh, here it is: "Crazy Flash"...

See "Tourist Trap"

Pacific Coast Highway / I-5., somewhere north of San Francisco?

I think this is the camera's way of saying: "run like hell".

Let's not forget.... there is a certain thrill associated with superb results from less than superb equipment.

In other words, it's nice to be a pro!

In addition to bouyancy, be sure to watch your breathing.

Bubbles in the picture rate a close second to water in the housing!

I once had a (very old) dive light flood once, but was so annoyed with it I just continued the dive! After surfacing, I flushed it pretty good and it still works to this day! I wouldn't recommend trying this with the D70, however :)

Good luck!

Hello all,

I'm an electrical engineer who likes to dabble in digital photography. I purchased the D70 about a year ago when I FINALLY decided to get more serious about the hobby.

That said, I am by no means an expert on this particular topic.

My guess is the D70's screen representation of the stored image is a separate issue from the exposure and color cast issues, though of course, they ultimately share the same source CCD imager & hardware.

But I'll bet they don't share the same internal camera software.

If the D70's LCD monitor is displaying JPG images (and I don't know that it is?), there are of course several "flavors" Nikon might have used, including perhaps one that is proprietary. Some flavors are lossless, but many are not. Those with loss (obviously desirable here due to small viewing screen & faster "paint performance") generally fall into two categories: Smoothing (fills in missing data), and Averaging (uses closest "neighbor" pixel, etc...)

The banding patterns at high shutter speeds might be the result of weaker performance of the CCD imager hardware, and thus you "see" more of what's the JPG computational arrays are doing. In reality, the banding might always be there, just not noticable with the naked eye, under low software demand, and on such a small display.

As for the exposure, I do not have that much experience (yet) with the D70 and fast shutter speeds. However, I would guess that again, the CCD imager hardware can only respond so fast. I didn't do the math, but there could be some doppler functions creeping in at higher speeds. I recall reading that the mechanical shutter speed is on the order of 10x slower than the fastest CCD "shutter speed". That means more software under the hood adjusting the exposure timing. (In other words, the CCD isn't taking the picture, even when the shutter is open?? -- It must be delayed electrically?)

And if so, that might introduce another factor: The CCD's ability to snap a picture from a "cold" start.

I must admit I don't know what happens with CCD imagers when their scan rates are pushed. I do know it takes a certain finite amount of time to read (and then decode) the CCD array, with the read time ultimately determining the fastest legitimate "shutter speed" available.

Of course, if one could know with some certainty (in advance) what the performance of the CCD is at high speed, it would seem possible to correct resulting systemic errors in software. (My head hurts even thinking about this.) But we do it with RF all the time... and that's a heck of a lot faster than 1/8000!

-Michael