tonybeach

"I thought Saturation should be Neutral rather than Normal. Any thoughts?"

 

> Hi James,

 

Set Saturation, Brightness, Contrast, and Sharpening to "-".

 

"Also, which CC filter did you use to give you the closest UniWB for use in NX?"

 

> CC40M with some tweaking of the WB settings (A6, G2; but do not consider these settings absolute as they may be filter and WB target related) to get the numbers to line-up with what I saw using the Rawnalyze program to determine when channels clipped.

 

I have been playing with Iliah Borg's recommendations for setting WB, the results are slightly different but essentially consistent. I may be updating the uni-WB file after further testing, I need some bright skies to come to any conclusions (hint: blue channel is more difficult to overexpose than it appears).

"Am I missing something?"

 

Nikon's 2008 copyright in the lower right corner.

 

"You know something that we don't?"

 

> I am not alone in what I know: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1030&message=27380457

 

"I see nothing about lenses except photogs' profile."

 

> Sorry, here's a more direct link: http://www.nikon.com/about/news/index.htm No news yet though.

"None of your points apply to the use of a camera for wedding photography. The last thing a photography wants to do is change AF settings and have 9 permutations to keep track of during a wedding. And stopping down to provide greater DOF is not possible at most church ceremonies or receptions with the ambient light levels and even if it was possible to shoot at f8 most photographers would not due to avoid having cluttered or distracting backgrounds compete with the subjects in their shots."

 

> The AF mode is displayed on the top LCD screen, getting in and out of that mode is one press and a quick turn of the dial, and my recommendation is to use 3D tracking instead of traditional "focus and recompose" to avoid stopping down to make up for the inherent deficiency of that method without 3D tracking. Ellen does not have to use 3D tracking to get from the D300 what she gets from the D200, but it offers her something she can't get from the D200 and can get from the D300.

 

"I have deal with new generations of AF from Nikon with the N90, F5, D1X, D2h/D2x, D200, and from Canon with the Mark II, 30D, 5D, and Mark III. In none of these instances did I have to change my approach to taking a shot to compensate for some aspect of the cameras AF system, with the possible exception of the D200 where only the center sensor could be used to AF with IR assist from a strobe."

 

> Then your experience is opposite of Ellen's, since she is complaining that she has to change her technique coming from a D200 to a D300. I don't know if you use the AF-ON button or not; but IMHO that is the best technique regardless of which camera one is using and something I would urge any serious photographer to adopt.

 

"It is very condescending to assume that your vast experience in very different circumstances apply to Ellen's situation. Coming from the D2X and the Mark III I have had to accept much less capable low light AF capabilities with the D3 and D300, especially when compared to the Mark III. And that is based on using the D2x and D200 with the Mark III, and later the D3, D300, and the Mark III at the same weddings and shooting over 100,000 images between these cameras under identical circumstances (over 8,000 with the D3 together with the Mark III)."

 

> With all due respect, I think you need to read the OP and my reply more carefully before attacking my advice. All I did was suggest that using the AF-ON button was better than performing both focusing and shutter actuation with the shutter button, and that using 3D tracking to "focus and recompose" was superior to not using it (and precisely for the reason that it gives more precise focusing and requires less stopping down). Your reply to me has been misguided and is OT. The fact is the D300 does a better job of acquiring focus than the D200 does; whether it or the D3 does worse than other cameras you have used is a topic for another thread since that was not brought up here until you mentioned it.

"Occasionally I'll take a picture, and the camera will actually take 2 shots, back to back, unexpectedly. So i suppose the shutter is pretty sensitive to whatever your doing."

 

> There is no doubt that the D300 is more hair trigger than the D200, and 6 fps compared to 5 fps also makes a difference. One of my default settings is to set the camera in CL shooting mode set to 3 fps, which gives me adequate time to release my finger from the shutter before the second actuation.

"I have tested the 3D Tracking with 51 AF points on both the D300 and D3. My experience with it is not as positive as Anthony's, but I am testing it with relatively small subjects, such as a bird that may be covered by 2 to 3 AF points in the viewfinder."

 

> Hi Shun,

 

I would not recommend Dynamic-area 3D tracking for smaller erratically moving subjects. I would recommend Dynamic-area AF with 9 or 21 points and Tracking set to "Long" (a4 in the Custom Shooting Menu) for that. Such a difficult target will require either panning or quick movement of the selected AF sensor manually selected by the user. Thom Hogan recommends switching to 11 point AF selection for this kind of shooting (a8 in the Custom Shooting Menu) to more quickly facilitate framing and selecting the appropriate AF sensor -- that makes good sense to me. I look forward to further reports from you about your experiences with the Multi-CAM3500.

Hi Allan,

 

Yes.

http://nikkor.com/home.htm

 

It just came up, although it's still a work in progress -- it looks like more

photographer's profiles will be added.

 

Expect new lens announcements to follow shortly.

"My style of shooting is old school. I have the middle point in the viewfinder set as my focus point. I push down halfway to focus, keep the shutter held down halfway, and recompose my shot if necessary or just wait for the moment to shoot the image."

 

> Regarding focus and recompose, for best results set one of your function buttons to dial in different AF focus area modes (f4 or f5 in the Custom Shooting Menu) and then dial in Dynamic-area AF, 51 point 3D tracking, in AF-C focusing mode. Otherwise, if you use Focus release priority on your shutter button (this can be configured at a1 in the Custom Shooting Menu) you will find yourself missing many shots as the original AF sensor used to acquire focus will have nothing under it in focus. Another reason to use this technique is "focus and recompose" without 3D tracking will result in out of focus shots (although stopping down the lens cures a lot of focus issues).

 

"I have read that people use the AF Lock button and just use the shutter button to release the shutter, but why should I change my style of shooting just because Nikon made this shutter button so sensitive?"

 

> Actually, it's the AF-ON button, and it's there on pro cameras because that's the best technique.

 

"When I stopped focusing and let the camera rest for a few minutes, the viewfinder went blank, but the display on top was still on."

 

> As Shun wrote, you need to half depress the shutter (or the AF-ON button) to wake up the camera's metering, it only takes a fraction of a second but not doing it will cause enough of a lag to miss a shot. You can also configure the metering to stay on longer (see c2 in the Custom Shooting Menu).

Hi Mary,

 

I'm glad you found the illustration useful.

 

Last night I was doing some testing and the importance of the cross hatched sensors on the D300 in low light was made evident. Using one of the outlying AF sensors (which are not cross hatched) I could not acquire focus; then I used 51 points 3D tracking and one of the 15 center AF sensors (which are cross hatched) to acquire focus, I was able to recompose and keep focus even as it drifted over to the original AF sensor that initially could not acquire focus but could maintain it while tracking.

1-2 weeks most likely. Ralph must have been exceptionally unlucky.

"D40 and sunny 16 rule shooting RAW. Worked for me."

 

> What if you use flash? It's great having iTTL flash with my Tokina 90/2.5 macro lens.

"Why not the D300, which has a larger market."

 

> The D300 already comes with an LCD cover.

"Ansel Adams would be able to afford a 39 megapixel Hasselblad but it still wouldn't have the detail of large format film nor the tonal/color range."

 

> So debatable, read this: http://www.outbackphoto.com/artofraw/raw_28/essay.html Add to that multiple exposures to stitch together higher resolutions, HDR, or both (which were not addressed in the article), and it's hard to imagine Ansel Adams not milking this technology.

"I don't know of anything that reads the camera serial number for the D300 or D200 or if serial numbers are even available in the EXIF for Nikon cameras."

 

> The serial number can be seen in the EXIF data using ExifTool (available here: http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/ ), so I would presume any software could read it if the authors wanted that information.

Hi Rene',

 

There is a seal between the glass and the body, and that is compromised. I can blow air in the crack between the body and glass near where I see most of the dust accumulating and see condensation from my breath on the inside of the glass. Since I often expose my cameras to dusty and windy conditions, the dust has found its way in there.

"...unless I carried the body [in the briefcase] with the lens detached"

 

> That's not a bad solution. If you are working with (for example) 3 primes you will only have a 1/3 of a chance that the right one is on the camera when you grab it anyway (maybe a little higher if you have a preference for say 30mm), and mounting a lens only takes about 5 extra seconds.

Thanks for the heads up Ellis.

 

Given the scratch resistance of the D3, this seems like "peace of mind" more than necessity. Bjorn Rorslett has written that he has tried to use a knife to scratch his D3 screen without doing any damage to it. In case anyone is interested, I can testify that the D300 screen is not as scratch resistant and mine has a barely visible chip in it since I find the plastic cover on the D300 impairs visibility of the screen (and I'm currently using the Kirk L bracket from my D200 which works adequately except there is no room to attach the plastic cover).

 

Nonetheless, better safe than sorry. Personally, I would find one of these: http://www.hoodmanusa.com/prodinfo.asp?number=H%2DD300 more useful, since viewing the LCD screen and taking advantage of Live View in bright sunlight can be pretty difficult when light is hitting the screen, and presumably you would get the added protection after it is folded up and the camera is stored. It's available (but out of stock) for the D300; I wonder when it will be available for the D3 (probably long before I can afford a D3).

Dynamic-area AF with 51 points 3D tracking is only available using AF-C focusing mode; in AF-S focusing mode it becomes Dynamic-area AF 51 points (without 3D tracking) and is used to help the user selected AF sensor to determine "best" focus. 3D tracking is just that, it gives the D300 and D3 added tracking capability using AF-C focusing mode and essentially replaces the Group Dynamic area focus modes in the D200 and D2 series cameras. It's a great feature which makes "focus and recompose" pretty much obsolete.

 

To better understand how using Dynamic-area AF differs from Single-area AF in the acquisition of focus and how this is in turn effected by the number of AF areas selected, put your camera in Auto AF mode and AF-S focusing mode and view the AF areas that light up in the viewfinder as you aim the camera at various targets. If you use 9 points in Dynamic-area AF mode it will use the neighboring AF sensors to assist the AF system in acquiring focus, using 21 points it will use the neighboring AF sensors and their neighboring AF sensors (two adjacent AF sensors in every direction), and using 51 points it will use all of the camera's AF sensors to assist in acquiring focus.<div></div>

"What I'm so dumbfounded by is why the noise only appears in ACR and not on the camera itself (in image review) or in preview."

 

> That's because the camera is doing a better job at removing the noise than ACR; the same is true if you use Nikon's software to do your conversions. The problem is technical and slightly beyond my understanding, but Iliah Borg is one of the authors of what I consider the best RAW converter (in terms of image quality), and he writes here: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1039&message=27332128 that, "ACR/LR use the white balance algorithm that is very far from what Nikon recommend and using in their products. One of the results of that is blown-out channels. The other is propagation of noise from the most underexposed channel to other, well-exposed channels."

Are you factoring in different base ISO on the two cameras? At base ISO the D200 (ISO 100) will be one stop less EV than the D70 (ISO 200).

What ISO are you shooting at? This appears to be severe chroma noise. If it is noise then you can increase the NR in ACR, or better still just use NX for RAW conversions from your D300 (the colors will be better too).

There's almost no way you can fix this yourself. The most likely outcome of any attempt to do so would be to make matters worse.

 

In the United States you can call here: 1-800-645-6678 Then press 2 and 4, then you will be on hold until someone can answer the phone (typically 5-20 minutes).

 

I am having the same problem with my D300 but will wait to have it looked at by Nikon until I am closer to the end of the warranty period (just in case something else more significant comes up). I will be very interested to read how Nikon responds to your problem if it's under warranty; if it's not under warranty then I would just live with it if I were you.

The initial previews in Lightroom are from the camera's embedded JPEGs which use the settings you used in the camera, but they are replaced by Lightroom's default conversion settings however you have those set up.

I agree with Frank, clearly resetting the camera to default settings is the first thing to do. The problem looks like goofed up WB and contrast settings to me.

What Charles is referring to can be disabled at #11 in the menu.