lester_hawksby1

You say you've heard about this colour cast... but have you experienced it, and is it really so severe?

 

Test! And if it's so strong that you really have a problem, I agree entirely with Lex - try a custom white balance first. It usually compensates for colour differences between lenses. If that doesn't do the trick, see if you can correct it on computer, then save your settings so you can do it automatically in future. Trying to fix colour casts with glass filters tends to be frustrating, cheap ones damage quality, and really good glass filters are quite expensive - so I wouldn't recommend that route. (Also, think about it: you're worried that your piece of cheap glass may have a problem... is screwing yet another piece to the front to try to correct it really a good plan?).

 

There can be other sources of colour problems too. If your computer screen is not calibrated, it could very easily give you an inaccurate sense of colour which will swamp the relatively small differences between lenses. A basic hardware calibrator isn't too expensive now, but it's still an extra expense and level of seriousness - up to you whether it's justified, really.

If I understand correctly, it should in theory be possible to make AI-s manual lenses work without an extra mechanical linkage - as long as the user enters the max aperture, the camera sets the selected aperture, and the lens is left dialed in to minimum. This is more or less how D lenses work on the non-mechanically-coupled bodies, after all. It wouldn't work with AI lenses (the aperture lever closes the stop non-linearly) or pre-AI lenses (which only fit the D40 series anyway). However, I suspect Nikon would be wary of advertising a feature which works only with AI-s lenses and not AI ones - the potential for confused, disappointed customers is quite possibly greater than the potential extension of the market.

 

It seems unlikely that they would start including stop down metering, despite the likely negligible cost of including it on any camera. Unlike the aperture coupling ring, it doesn't require any new mechanisms, but neither does the depth of field preview button and they don't seem too keen to include that on low end models.

 

To my mind, shooting a test shot and examining the histogram is a pretty comparable amount of effort and fiddle to using a hand held meter, and only marginally slower than using stop-down metering. I'm actually pretty happy working that way most of the time and prefer it to stop-down metering for the sheer accuracy - but it rather depends on your choice of subjects as to whether this is acceptable. As in the film era, being able to accept a little less convenience can save an awful lot of money!

 

As for obsolescence - as long as it continues to work, it's good. Some of the very early cameras weren't really quite there in development terms - short battery lives, fiddly interfaces, too much noise even at reasonable ISOs. Now, although newer cameras are undoubtedly better and will keep going that way, most dSLRs on the market are well developed tools and will still take good images with relative ease as long as they last (another matter entirely, but early signs are surprisingly good by the standards of modern electronic widgets). Sure, next year's will be better - but only professionals really *need* to worry about that, and then only due to market pressure. For everyone else a better body is an indulgence... a really nice one, if you can afford it, but not something to lose too much sleep over.

Easy question first: Metering, yes, it will meter fine.

 

Subjective question second: Different people seem to have very different experiences of manual focus. Only being one person, I don't know how typical my experience is, but I find it really easy. Others complain that they find it impossible, but I find it hard to imagine myself in their shoes so I don't really understand why. (I have awful eyesight so it's not that). It's been a long time since I used a Pronea (I never actually owned one) but I'm pretty sure the d40's viewfinder is actually slightly better, so if you can manually focus on the Pronea you will probably be OK on the D40 - it might be worth trying that first. Does your Pronea have a focus-confirm light when you use manual focus? I find the D40's one very useful. If I understand correctly, the new d60 has a fancier arrangement to tell you when you're nearly in focus as well as when you've nailed it, but I've not tried that - and for the extra cost you may as well step up to a d80.

 

Using a digital SLR does seem to make one more exacting about focus. I'm pretty sure that even the d40 sensor is more detailed than APS film, so close examination tends to reveal a lot to pick on. When a file is open at 100% it's like examining a huge print from a close distance, and something about the nature of monitor pixels seems to be particularly unforgiving. This is not in itself a problem, it just takes a little getting used to.

 

Be warned that if you also have a Pronea-specific lens (IX-Nikkor, like the kit zoom that probably came with it) it should apparently NOT be mounted on new dSLRs, even though it should in theory be able to cover their sensors. D40 and D200 manuals are very firm about this one - something about having enough clearance distance for the mirror. The 50/1.8D will be absolutely fine, though.

 

Hope that's of some help.

Well, it's really lovely of you guys to step in and enthuse about how much better your far more expensive camera bodies are - but wait! was that the original question asked?

 

I've used the d2x and d200 (and do about half my work with its lovely mutant cousin the S5) and, while a little better than the d40, their finders are really not leaps and bounds above at all - I don't think the original poster should be worrying terribly much about that. The finder on the d200 and its relations is still a lot smaller than the old film SLR finders (try comparing it to an OM-1) - you have to go to FX format to get at all close to those. Also, *all* usably bright AF viewfinders tend to exaggerate how much will be sharp (until you've stopped down so far that it's too dark to see much at all). Yes, you can see the effect of stopping down to some extent - but it's a rough preview, while the LCD is a far better reflection of what you're really capturing. And if it's really critical I can zoom too! No chance of doing *that* in the finder of anything smaller than a view camera. Sure, it's nice to have both - but in-finder preview isn't the must-have that it was on film, and for something like macro work I know which I stick with.

 

Alan G - truth is, though bigger badder bodies are nice to have, they represent only small incremental improvements and not radically different capabilities and are honestly not worth losing sleep over. (Lenses, on the other hand...) Nothing really important is missing from the d40 unless you have a very specific application in mind, but some of the standard features of all digital SLRs (preview, histograms) are such big changes it takes a little while to absorb just how much difference they make. And good luck in your battle against noise! Did you get to the bottom of it in the end?

There's no real need for DoF preview on a digital SLR. Remember, test shots are

free now! Just take a shot and press playback - that tells you *exactly* what

you're going to get, far more accurate than the preview lever on a film SLR ever

was. It's hardly slower, either, and DoF control has always been one for the

slow contemplative shots rather than the manic grabs anyway. Even on a dSLR body

which does have DoF facility I never use it now.

 

Noise happens on all digital cameras, and the d40 has relatively little.

However, it gets worse in two situations - at high ISO values and in

underexposed shadow areas. Check what ISO you're shooting at! With digital

cameras, the ISO is a value you will probably end up wanting to change during a

shooting session - generally picking the lowest you can get away with for an

acceptable aperture/shutter combination. There is an option in the d40 menus to

set the self timer button to be an ISO control instead, which I really recommend

doing. You should see little or no noise at ISO 200, barely any at 400. Whether

800's noise is acceptable is partly a matter of taste, partly a matter of

lighting situation. 1600 and 3200 ("HI 1") are always going to have a bit of

noise, but with postprocessing you can do an awful lot better than film did at

those speeds! The threshold of acceptable noise is partly a matter of taste, so

try taking a range of test shots of the same scene at the full spread of ISOs to

get an idea of what you're in for.

 

Exposure. It's a strange thing to get used to when switching from film, but the

histogram (check the manual) is an amazingly valuable tool. If too many of your

tones are concentrated at the bottom end, any noise in the file will be more

prominent. On the other hand, if too many of your tones jam up against the

maximum value ("highlight clipping") it will look a lot uglier than overexposure

ever did on film (you've probably seen that already). Check the histograms of a

few of your shots and see if that helps.

 

Luminance noise (variance of lightness, like black, white and grey specks) is

actually not as much of a problem as you might think. While it can look bad at

100% zoom on screen it is frequently not at all offensive on prints. The colour

aspect of noise (red, green and blue specks) is much more visually distracting

so is a worse problem. If you have an image editing program with a "reduce

noise" option, it probably has a "chroma noise" variable - this can reduce the

colour blotches without attempting to take on the luminance noise (which tends

to destroy detail) - on the d40 I find this gives pretty good results most of

the time.

 

Good luck and have fun!

Avi - nothing wrong with your lens, or with using it at 1.4.

 

What you see is, I'm afraid, a natural consequence of using a very fast lens on a digital sensor with a very, very overexposed object in the scene. It is difficult to see how it could be avoided at those exposure settings. On the other hand, as you say, other settings would not give the desired cloud effect.

 

You may want to try a higher ISO setting, which would allow you to stop down a little further, say to f/2.8. The d40 is not too bad for noise.

The .45x wide angle converter

(a) lets you get slightly more in frame *when the lens is zoomed all the way out* to 18mm

(b) probably adds some distortion

© probably reduces sharpness

(d) unless it's very light, may be too heavy for the 18-55 to support and focus when zoomed out all the way to 18mm. Be careful.

 

It may be useful to you, it may not. Since shooting with the d40 doesn't really cost you anything, I would suggest taking several frames with it fitted and the same subjects without, all with the lens zoomed out to maximum. Afterwards, compare the shots side-by-side on your computer - both at fit-to-screen (see how much more the converter gets in) and at 100% zoom (see whether it decreases quality, and if so, whether the decrease is acceptable to you).

 

Same goes for the teleconverter, though of course zoomed all the way *in* this time. The only absolutely sure way to know whether a piece of equipment will be any good to you is to try it, and it's probably better to do those tests when you've got time to play rather than during an unrepeatable event like a wedding.

 

In truth, I don't think the teleconverter will be useful to you as you already have a 75-300 lens which will probably give better results. Getting good enough results out of a longer lens, like the 75-300 zoomed all the way in, takes practice - it should be capable of acceptable sports shots, but the only way to get good at capturing the moment is to keep doing it.

 

See if you can make a regular arrangement to shoot practice games or something so that you're completely used to it before you have a go at the cup final or other major game. I've been doing something similar with bird photography, frequently shooting the ones near my office so I'm more experienced when I get to go to reserves or the country, and it really pays off.

 

If you have the budget for more equipment, I second the suggestion of the Sigma 30/1.4 - it's one of your best chances to get decent people shots using only the light available indoors. However, it is a little too wide for posed face-only portraits.

The S5 is a wonderful thing, but is different from other digital cameras and has a bit of a learning curve. Don't panic - but schedule some serious practice time. Everyone has different setting recommendations and most of them are "right" (in different ways), so you will need to systematically work through the important ones to find out which ones suit you. Don't be daunted, it is entirely worth it and there's no camera I'd rather have.

 

As to your original query: You say "I just went to upload them for printing, and one picture is saying not suitable for printing at 4x6, and the rest of the headshots say not suitable at 8x10". Even if you have the camera in 6-megapixel mode (Jpeg "M") you would have to be cropping quite substantially to really have too few pixels for this. The camera's default settings produce larger files (in pixel terms) than your Pentax though they contain about the same amount of detail. (On the other hand, why crop to headshots? Why not just shoot dedicated headshots as well? The quality will always be better, whatever camera you use)

 

I don't know what you're cropping *from*, but one thing does spring to mind. Have you checked that the "dpi" value in the file info is the same as it used to be from your Pentax? The dpi value is essentially worthless, it *does not mean anything*, but it is just possible that your photo processor is confused and is trying to use it to evaluate printability. I don't know about the Pentax, but on the Fuji you can tell the camera what dpi value to stamp on the file info - try changing it to the same as the Pentax files and see if that helps your print service understand.

 

(My own settings tip: It took me a while to get satisfactory detail. The camera defaults to its highest noise reduction setting, which is too high and causes detail loss. Turn it from "std" to "org" and everything gets sharper, but noise is still admirably low. Also, the 6mp setting looks much better on screen at 100% than the 12mp setting, but in equal-sized minimally-processed prints the 12mp setting does definitely contain more actual detail - providing they are correctly exposed. Under- or over-exposed shots produce very poor 12mp out-of-camera jpegs where they might be acceptable at 6mp)

Pretty much any old manual lens will produce images on a d40, though some wider ones can be disappointing. You will have to dial the camera to "M" and get used to a complete lack of automation, but it actually works quite well - take a test shot, examine the histogram, set exposure accordingly. With only a little practice it becomes about as fast as using the meter, and of course the histogram is a very accurate guide.

"perfectly usable" is very much a matter of individual preference and viewing conditions. Differences between 6 and 10 megapixels are perceptible in large prints if you get close, but barely so from longer distances - so it depends how they're going to be displayed.

 

You say "I suppose I need to shoot maximum resolution some time" - do you mean you don't always? There's no real reason not to now that storage is so cheap, and it's impossible to judge the quality of your entire system unless you do.

 

It is certainly possible to exceed the quality of an old 4mp small-sensor camera with any modern digital SLR. If you can't, either something's wrong with the camera, or you're not comparing like with like. I don't know about the E-10 specifically, but in general small-sensor fixed-lens cameras tend to do a lot more in-camera sharpening than serious dSLRs. Most SLRs are designed on the assumption that the user will sharpen in postprocessing, and will not look as "sharp" as compacts unless you do. (DPReview says the E-10 sharpens pretty heavily)

 

The lens on your Olympus was probably pretty good, but I doubt it was substantially better than any good Nikon lens. If you can't beat the Oly's results with your d70's best quality and careful use of unsharp mask, you might have a bad copy of your lens or some kind of AF problem.

You almost certainly don't need an extension tube for flowers. Smaller insects, maybe. I'd suggest only buying one if you repeatedly feel you want to focus even closer than you can already.

 

With birds the problem is generally one of needing a longer lens, not of being able to focus closer. No teleconverter you can buy will really make a 105mm long enough to get good bird shots; the biggest (2x) would only make it 200mm and might cause unacceptably poor quality. Birds tend to be so far away they're best tackled with a 300 or, preferably, longer.

Rick - no offence taken. I assumed you had HDR in mind, but the "it's so assistants don't mess up" aspect wasn't apparent from the original question. That makes sense now; though I would have thought photo students would understand manual bracketing, I can see the advantage of having the camera set up so that every shutter press will do it right so they can't forget.

 

If it's for a professional application and needs to survive use by assistants, I would have thought a d200 would make a lot of sense - it's a pretty solid and sensible thing. I use a Fuji S5 which is the same body, and it's a really good camera body, no doubt about it. (Thinking about your application, the S5 has a feature which can lock set aspects of the controls so they can't be disrupted, which might suit - I don't know if the d200 has a feature like that but I don't think so)

ADR: No, there's no little window to read off the aperture values on the lens. The camera reads the aperture ring setting electronically and displays the f/number on the viewfinder's digital display just like it does with electronic lenses.

 

It all works pretty well and intuitively. Most AI/AI-s lenses give very good results on digital, too. A small proportion don't live up to their potential for various reasons, but most of the rest make modern lenses look bad by comparison!

If you use an SLR, you will find many things about digital compacts difficult to live with. Poor viewfinder, fiddly manual controls, poor AF and no usable manual focus, and a long shutter lag for starters. I think Ronald's recommendation of a d40 was spot on - it's probably easier to get good snaps out of than a compact, not too big, and will even take your FM2's lenses (unmetered, but this is not a big problem on digital).

Why on earth do you need such massive automatic bracketing? Do you shoot in a special situation that prevents you from moving the exposure comp control by hand?

 

All but the oldest dSLRs have enough megapixels, and every dSLR I can think of captures raw+jpg, so neither of those criteria does much to narrow things down. Very wide lenses are available for just about everything if you include third-party models. That leaves only the bracketing criterion restricting your choice of bodies and, as you say, only very high end bodies tend to go that far. Since AEB is so easily done manually, I don't think it's a good criterion to rely on! Go handle a few mid-range bodies (d80, whatever Canon takes your fancy, maybe the Pentax too) and see which one you like the viewfinder and interface of - much more important factors than any single feature you see on a spec sheet, since they matter every time you use the camera.

Juanjo - no, it has its own motor and focuses fine on a d40. Personally, I think it's a pretty good combination too. The lens is a little weighty but not very long, so it doesn't overbalance like long zooms can.

On the other hand, shooting a trial frame and using the histogram as the best TTL light meter ever is easy, hardly slower than stopdown, more accurate than anything else. And it works on any camera with no added hardware, so I think they just didn't bother including stopdown metering *because shooting a trial frame totally outmodes it*. I hardly miss metering when using old lenses on the d40; if anything, it reminds me of using a handheld meter, which I rather liked anyway.

 

Nikon are far from perfect, but since they let me get good use from 1960s lenses on a dSLR that was only released last year, I just can't bring myself to hate them all that much. And I would really have liked to see the faces of some of the people in this group if they'd had manual Canon gear in the 1980s when Canon decided to dump backwards compatability in its entirety :-)

 

(Before I reach for the fire extinguisher, I have nothing against Canon at all, don't start. In fact, sometimes I wonder if Nikon would have been better off commercially and technically if they'd dumped the F mount a couple of years ago, but I'm jolly glad they didn't)

I'm really quite impressed by it. Retention of highlight detail is fantastic. It's still possible to blow out highlights, but much harder; in many landscape situations it doesn't even need any messing around with grads to get the sky right, though it still does sometimes. Very bright blue skies need careful exposure to avoid the green cast seen in Edward's first picture, which happens when the blue channel clips and the others don't so they get out of proportion, but compared to the limits of... ohh... EVERY OTHER DIGITAL CAMERA it's no big problem.

 

Fuji's RAW converter software (the separate one, not the bundled freebie) is ugly, but does a much better job of the actual conversions than anything else seems to.

 

My only reservation with the S5 is that there is a steep initial learning curve to achieve the best quality. I was disappointed at first, but after putting the time in to work out how to get the most out of it I'm finally happy. In particular, it is capable of a lot of detail, but dodgy exposures limit the number of usable pixels and Fuji's default NR causes excess softness. (Goodness knows why, but the weaker NR is perfect anyway so it doesn't matter)

I learned on a Nikkormat. I miss the shutter speed ring around the lens mount, with a little protruding tab. That way the left hand has instant access to all the adjustments, leaving the right to wind and shoot, wind and shoot, wind and shoot... I can get more frames per second with a dSLR, but not more keepers per second.

 

On the other hand, with a Zeiss Super Ikonta C, five minutes per frame seems about right. Every tool has an optimum pace of working.

It's really hard to tell from that picture whether the lens is just covered in dust and crud (which will clean off just fine) or whether it's covered in scratches and has sticky blobs in hard-to-reach parts of the interior. I've bought worse-looking lenses in person and cleaned them up to a good-enough standard, but I wouldn't do that with ebay. In the real world you can bargain down prices by pointing out flaws; on the internet they know full well it's completely Bognored, but they're pretending otherwise and probably shill bidding too.

 

In general, though, a lens has to be really quite scratched for it to matter. I've seen someone using a lens with a chip in the front, painted out with black nail varnish to stop it flaring, and no detectable impact on his images at all. I have some older lenses with very soft coatings which have thousands of tiny scratches from sloppy cleaning by their former owners, maybe the contrast's a little lower than when new, otherwise they're fine. A "protective" UV filter can do a lot more damage to image quality.

It's designed to be easy for a lightweight motor to move. As a result, it doesn't have very much resistance, so it tends to slip on manual. Any 18-55 kit lens will do more or less the same, so I'm afraid you'll need a better lens if you want to do a lot of manual focusing. I don't think many basic plastic kit zooms (from any manufacturer) are particularly good in this regard - maybe there are one or two honourable exceptions, but I've not tried enough to be sure.

Hi Margaret,

 

I second everyone else's suggestion that you not upgrade unless you are really feeling that your existing gear is limiting you.

 

As for your other question, the 60mm 2.8 is a macro lens, and a very good one. It will focus a lot closer than any zoom and is very high quality. The 17-55 2.8 is an excellent (and expensive!) lens but it is for a completely different purpose - it would replace and outclass your 18-55/3.5-5.6, but it would never focus as close as the 60mm can.

 

Keep the 60 if you want to experiment with macro (very close up) work, or if you will sometimes want a really very sharp lens (correctly used, it should be much sharper than your other lenses).

There's no 18-55 2.8.

 

There is a 17-55 2.8 which is very good, but very expensive. It's a pretty substantial piece of hardware.

 

There is an 18-55 3.5-5.6 which is very cheap and correspondingly cheaply made, though it is quite good optically for the money if you stay between 20mm-40mm. This lens is supplied as a kit with the d40 and maybe other cameras too. The only upside of the cheap and wobbly build quality is that it is fairly small and ridiculously light.

 

Nikon's 18-70 zoom is about as dim, but sharper and better made than the 18-55, which probably justifies the extra cost for most uses.

 

I don't know the Tamron to which you refer, but bear in mind that a 2.8 variable zoom will only really be 2.8 at its very widest, so it will not be as useful in low light as the 50/1.8 you already have.

1: Use RAW any time you know you want maximum quality, and/or when the light is difficult. Use JPEG when immediacy of results is more important and you want do a lot of shooting without having to schedule a lot of time for post processing.

 

2. No, only when you save the picture.

 

3. You can get more out of your images in RAW mode so, yes, this is a good idea. JPEG stores less tonal data than the camera's sensor recorded, RAW has access to all of it.

 

4. There are a lot of factors here! A lot depends on the exact situation but, by and large, the SLR is a more capable machine. You may need to learn a little more technique to get the most out of it. It is worth bearing in mind that most cheaper compacts apply a lot of artificial sharpening to their pictures, and most dSLRs don't; initial results may look a little softer, but the actual level of detail captured is better (all other things being equal). This makes it easier to get a good result out of Photoshop's sharpen tools.

For online display and small prints, there is another fast, easy option. I sometimes set up a dSLR with macro lens over a light box. Quality is quite good, enough for a 10x8, and it is very fast to pop another slide in place and push the button. It can't replace high quality scans for large prints or long-term archiving, but is a great way to get a pic on the web without scanner hassles if you already have the equipment. Save the effort of producing really good scans - or the cost of drum scan work - for the few that really deserve it!

 

These days, when I develop b&w film, I do my contact sheets this way - so I can see previews without having to do any darkroom setup, then take my time deciding which ones to print and how.