richard_driscoll

This one also RX100M3 last autumn near Lydford, late afternoon.

Dart valley, Dartmoor. This one taken by the wife on our new RX100M3 using full (green) auto mode. Evaluative meter seems to work very well.

Strange coincidence; I've just ordered a new one as my clone seems to have failed after about 2 years. I'm trying one direct from Hong Kong at £2.25 this time. I wonder if the same Chinese factory is making all of them as they all so similar? It is so good on a tripod using the rear IR receiver, so much less bother than the clumsy cable version.

Andrew, Ah, if only we had access to the source code. It's so annoying when that's what I used to do before I retired! Still I see the encryption has been broken so all you need to do is sit down with a nice cuppa and decompile the code ;-) Mathew, Musical chairs at Nikon again. On looking at the D7500 manual I see that they have dumped easy ISO but brought back the choice of ISO display rather than shots remaining. Easy exposure compensation remains - surely that's just too dangerous! Gary, The VR lenses actually have X and Y velocity sensors but I suspect that their information never actually reaches the camera body.

RJ, I think the reason is related to why I've mainly given up on auto ISO anyway namely that the auto ISO system is rarely set exactly right in any particular situation:- "Oh shucks, the ISO has gone up a bit and the quality has gone down but I've just put on a VR lens and I don't actually need such a high shutter speed, I'd rather choose a lower ISO and lower speed." Because I found myself resetting it or turning it off I thought I might as well leave it off all the time and make the ISO easy to set. I do have U1 set to P mode with auto ISO and the focus mode set to the auto thingy so that I can quickly grab one of those once-in-a-lifetime pictures very quickly but I'm still waiting for one to turn up .... ;-)

RJ, I originally asked the question about ISO display because I do use easy ISO and the rotten Nikon handbook doesn't say that easy ISO changes the display in the viewfinder and the diagram in the front of the manual showing the display doesn't mention ISO either . I don't have a problem with it since I use easy ISO. I agree that if you are not using easy ISO then you can probably remember what you have ISO set to or indeed what the display on the top of the camera showed when you just looked at it. Digging around on the Web I see the complaints mainly come from those not using easy ISO who do use auto ISO. These people complain that they can't tell at the time of shooting just what ISO the camera has chosen since all the viewfinder shows is a blinking "auto iso." They don't want to turn on easy ISO to get this info. since they find themselves changing ISO inadvertently, as would I if I hadn't changed the camera so that easy ISO is always on the front dial. It all depends on what you are used to I guess.

Gary, Thanks for that. Sure you see ISO in the viewfinder while the ISO button is pressed but I'd like to know if you can set the camera so that ISO is shown in the viewfinder when the meter is active and no buttons are pressed (including shutter release). My guess is that on the D7200 the only option is for frames remaining, rather than ISO. Another advantage I find is that the viewfinder displays the ISO chosen by auto-ISO (if it is enabled of course). Mathew, Many thanks. It sounds that the D7100 behaves like my D7000. I have mine set like I do mainly because I came from a D40 which has no front dial. My D7000 now works rather like a D40 with the front dial ISO control thrown in as a bonus!

Can anyone with a D7200 confirm that it's not possible to set the camera so that it displays ISO in the viewfinder rather than exposures remaining? I can do that on my D7000 and I think you can on the D7100 and D7500 but after looking at the downloaded D7200 manual I have it looks as if you can't. I have my D7000 set so that the rear dial controls program shift in P mode, aperture in A mode and shutter speed in S and M modes. The front dial controls ISO in all modes except M. In the viewfinder I have shutter speed, aperture and ISO all in a line and in all modes except M I can choose whatever I like using both command dials, at eye level, with no button pressing. This is really only useful if I can see ISO in the viewfinder all the time. The D7200 solves the painfully small buffer on the D7100 but with no ISO in the viewfinder I think I'll hang on to my D7000! Now the D500 is out the D7XXX model has been cut back in features - only one SD card, no rear infra red receiver, no aperture teller for example.

After a number of years using mostly auto white balance I've starting using more manual settings on my Nikon D40 and D7000. I've recently bought a Sony RX100M3 but searched in vain for anything in the instruction manual which would tell me what the various white balance settings mean in terms of degrees K or what the trim control does in terms of mired shift. The free Capture One Sony provides this information if you shoot in raw so I thought I'd pass it on in case anyone is interested. Colour temp. of common presets with my mired conversions :- Daylight 5349 K (187 mired) Shade 7607 K (131 mired) Cloudy 6162 K (162 mired) Tungsten 2831 K (353 mired) Flash 7215 K (139 mired) - seems very high Now the trims:- Daylight +A2 trim 5983 K (-20 mired) Daylight +A4 trim 6826 K (-41 mired) Daylight +A6 trim 7897 K (-60 mired) So a shift of one moves the mireds by 10. I'm hoping that trims to Cloudy and Shade do the same thing. For any Nikon users, Nikon claim that a trim change of one corresponds to a shift of 5 mired so the Sony is double. By the way I find the camera is good but the instruction manuals are really bad. I can't find anything about flash sync or what shutter speed I need to use to capture most of the flash energy in S mode for example.

<p>It must be just the newer D7K cameras as with my D7000 I can shoot 15 raw frames before slowing, at 6 fps using my normal 12 bit lossy compression at H2.0 (25600 ISO). The display always shows r11 which is a little odd but the book says 15. High ISO NR is set to normal.</p> <p> </p>

<p>We had a discussion on a similar topic a while ago:-<br> http://www.photo.net/nikon-camera-forum/00dfv8<br> I'd raised the point that the AF specs. (unlike the specs. for the meter) don't ever quote an aperture and the conclusion reached was that so long as the aperture was sufficiently wide, often f/5.6, then it didn't actually matter.<br> -1EV at ISO 100 is actually pretty dim.</p>

<p>Picture control settings don't affect the raw image but they do affect the appearance of the histogram. If you use a high contrast picture control the histogram may lead you to believe that the bright portions of the image are over exposed when the sensor is not actually saturated and the raw image will be fine when 'developed' to a lower contrast.<br> Like Thomas I tend to use neutral when shooting raw. I don't have 'flat' on my D7000.</p>

<p>I don't know about the D750 but my D7000 manual explicitly says which settings are <em>not</em> saved in U1 and U2 and 'File Naming' is one of them. It might be worth a look to see what the D750 claims to save since a firmware update should not make the information in the manual invalid without a statement to that effect.</p>

<p>Thanks again - I just this moment disabled the AF lamp on my D7000. The camera does indeed work very well in the gloomy UK indoor light of today even with the cheapo 18-55 mm zoomed in to 55 mm f/5.6. I'll leave it off and see how it goes. Actually the life is probably pretty good since the light looks yellow and under-run for AF purposes; it's brighter for red eye reduction I think.</p>

<p>RJ & Pete S,<br> Thanks for that - I hadn't thought of the beam splitter (rather like the wedge prisms on a reflex screen perhaps?) and that is likely the explanation. Even though the AF sensor is in the equivalent of the sensor plane the rays from the cone edges of a wide aperture lens will be too divergent to be of any use unless the splitter is designed to make use of them as is the case for the ones designed for f/2.8 min. rather than f/5.6 min. That is presumably the explanation of why there is no aperture mentioned in the AF specs. for Nikon, Canon (and Pentax too I notice).<br> <br />RJ,<br> Excuse me asking but presumably you did have the AF assist lamp off in your experiment? Mine is normally on.<br> <br />It is frequently the case that the faster lenses have faster AF motors so they may perhaps focus faster due to the faster motor rather than better AF measurement.</p>

<p>I just looked at the specs for Canon EOS 70D and EOS 7D mk II.<br> They are quoted the same way as Nikon; ISO 100, f/1.4 for the meter but no aperture quoted for the AF system.<br> So they both seem to be saying that AF in dim light is just as good with a slow f/5.6 zoom as with a fast prime.</p>

<p>Shun,<br> Yes, none of the Nikon specs. I've seen mention lens aperture in connection with AF but they all mention it in connection with metering. I just wonder why that is so.<br> I'll look and see what Canon say about it ....</p> <p>Ilkka,<br> Not just the matrix meter - they quote limits (D7000 matrix and CW down to 0 EV, spot down to +2 EV). Yes they will sort of work down to lower limits but how well is anybody's guess. Yes of course you can get by without a meter - I was playing devils advocate and also pointing what does seem to me to be a little bizarre.</p>

<p>When reading the specs. for the new D500 I noticed that the AF works down to EV -4 at ISO 100 which is equivalent to LV -4. It seems odd that there is no lens aperture mentioned since the light reaching the AF sensor is dependant on aperture and surely the autofocus works better when there is more light on the sensor. This is not unique to the D500; my D40 and D7000 both quote the spec. in the same way though of course the limit is higher (-1 EV at ISO 100).<br /> The spec. for the metering quotes an aperture of f/1.4 which is what I'd expect so why isn't it similar for autofocus?<br /> Does anyone have an explanation? All I can think of is that AF will work less well with slow lenses in poor light but that larger errors can be tolerated due to the larger DOF and the effects cancel out.<br> By the way. Is there much value in an AF system that works in lower light than the meter?!!</p>

<p>Pretty sure I've done this using Shun's method on my D40 a while back.<br> If the current D40 sequence number is higher than the desired one then you may need to reset the sequence numbers first. That procedure is described in the manual I think.</p>

<blockquote> <p>If it is plastic, as all the ones I know are, you shouldn't have to worry about hurting the lens.</p> </blockquote> <p>Take care! The cap is probably plastic but this lens has a plastic mount!</p>

<blockquote> <p>or just have gone with the flow and used whatever frame size Leica provided?</p> </blockquote> <p>Surely yes - he'd just get used to seeing the picture with whatever framing he'd been given to work with.</p> <p>Interesting that Nikon tried 32 mm initially but then tried 34 mm before throwing in the towell and going with Leica's 36 mm. Why was that I wonder? </p>

<p>The FE2 and FG both need a batteries to work at anything other than a single speed. It is 1/250 for the FE2 and IIRC 1/90 for the FG. The FM3a is a hybrid. It will work without batteries and again IIRC it uses the mechanical speeds when in manual mode and the electronically governed speeds when in auto, aperture prority, mode.<br> In practice if the FE2 has batteries there is little functional difference between the FM3a and the FE2 but the FE2 sells for <em>far</em> less! Both have a viewfinder which is poor for people with glasses which is one reason why I never use my FE2 now.</p>

<p>+1<br> The 7200 will probably have some local contrast enhancement (they call it clarity) set by default and it is not an option on the 7100. I think I can see the effect of that, so pretty meaningless without the same jpeg processing.<br> I'm amazed by the effect of modern jpeg processing on the raw images from my old D40. With capture NX-D all the options are available except active D lighting, which I think may be because of royalties.</p>

<p>Thanks for that Q.G.<br> My copy of Windows 7 is 32 bit so the problem's common to 32 and 64 bit. Wonder if I can log a bug anywhere?</p>

<p>A question while we on the NX-D topic. Is anyone using a network drive in conjunction with NX-D on Windows 7? While Windows Explorer (is that what the file manager is called?) can see all the folders on the network drive and the associated NEF files, NX-D can't see anything below the top level drive and it seems to hang while looking.<br> There is a caveat in that I'm running Windows 7 with Virtualbox under GNU/Linux where shared directories appear as network drives but I've had no trouble with anything else and in any case, as mentioned above, the Windows file manager is fine.<br> Thanks in advance.</p> <p> </p>