sjoerd_leeuwenberg

<p>Running a studio while being handicapped sounds like a challenge, best of luck with that. Makes my photography sound very easy all of a sudden. But I bet the results are good and the pleasure is even greater when a lot of effort went into it.<br>

About the camera's, I would take D90's, can be remotely controlled with USB. Or maybe A D5x00 for the articulated screen. Build-in automatic zoom control will not be possible. If you have fixed positions, you might be able to construct a simple wheel with rubber band construction, you might be able to put the wheel in a location you are able to reach and then use the rubber band to connect the wheel with the zoom ring. Just a thought.</p>

<p>I think a dropped ball bearing will not accurately work unless you trigger the shutter on an already falling ball, because otherwise the magnetic flux decay will take an undetermined time to release the ball.<br>

The next video:

doesn't really show an accurate shutter delay (maybe it does). But is fun to see anyway</p>

<p>Unfortunately I do not have that much experience with the D300, I have a D90 that I am quite happy with. of course I have my issues: better AF, better ISO, old lens support, higher resolution, lens AF adjustment, etc. But in general it is a very nice camera. As many people I am waiting to see what a possible D400 might bring.</p>

<p>I see the camera's in three levels: Toys, Tools and Machines (D3 etc). I think the D90 is a nice tool, but certainly not a machine and I have the feeling the D300 is.</p>

<p>Of course I was checking out the D7100 because it comes much closer featurewise. A friend of mine just bought it and it is great of course. But I immediately had my issues with it: It seemed slower with reactions than the D90, especially going into menus and such. Did anybody else notice this? Like it is loading a DLL each time and then if you try a few seconds later it does go into the menu quicker. And I was also missing the focus point selector indicator on the top LCD. A lot of the time I use that on the D90 instead of the viewfinder.</p>

<p>Right now, to me it seems like there is a gap in the lineup. DX makes more sense for some people and to me it seems like the D7100 is not the workhorse machine that some may need. Nikon does not always fill gaps of course. I think it is also strange that there is not really a professional 50mm. I have the F1.4 and it is great, but to call it the highest end 50mm from Nikon you can buy? It is not incredibly sharp @ 1.4 and the Focus is agonizingly slow sometimes. There should be higher end options right?</p>

<p>Hi, Just bought the same (non-D) 35-70mm a few weeks ago for 100 euro. It does focus well on the D90. But I did have some bad electrical contact problems in the beginning, have cleaned the contacts now, but am not sure if the problem is resolved. If the motor is heard then it is not the electrical contacts, is there maybe some mechanical damage on lens or body you can find? or any mechanical differences between D600 and D70?<br>

Am happy with the lens although the range is a bit limiting. I was a bit shocked however with the huge loss of contrast when there is even just a bit of light shining into the lens. The new coatings are small miracles in comparison. Especially the 10-24mm is great with backlight. I swill have a huge sunshade on it.</p>

<p>Hi, The camera uses the WB setting and depending on its setting it interprets the scene and uses that information to create the in-camera JPG. The RAW file data however is not altered, the camera merely adds the selected or determined WB as information in the RAW file (in the settings, not in the actual RAW picture data). When you use Nikon software, this will read the RAW data and interprets this together with the WB info to come up with a similar picture.</p>

<p>However Lightroom does not know of this WB info and will determine for itself what value to use and in case of a jpg, the value 'from camera' or so will use the original jpg data. For RAW this is not applicable and it will choose something, don't know what.</p>

<p>For RAW you will have to do this for yourself. and luckily this can be very easy, with the WB color picker tool you can select a point in a reference picture, be it: white, cream, grey or blue paper, or the whites in the eye for that matter and save that as a preset with WB changing only. On the import of the other pictures you can simply apply that setting to all other pictures. Especially with good stable lights (some can change WB when they get warm or old I've heard) you don't have to do this each time, but under the same situation you can reuse the setting over and over again. </p>

<p>great trivia Bob,<br>

Your telephoto remark tells me that my novoflex 600mm is not a telephoto, since it has only one lens and is 600mm long, haha.<br>

My solution to the problem would be that you write Nikon to implement more (cross) focus points and more widely spread over the image, then Nikon would implement this in the D400 that they can finally create then, we would buy it and be happy. I am wondering if they do not spread the points out more because that would require a bigger sub-mirror and that doesn't fit.</p>

<p>Hi, I think I see a problem here, you want to do as much as possible in-camera, and use the custom white balance (set to a fixed value or measured as Rodeo pointed out above), but the RAW file will not be different, right? only the JPG. Of course you can go through Nikon software to convert the RAW to TIF including the camera WB setting, but then it is easier just to use the grey/white paper shot in lightroom to correct the whole set in one import action.</p>

<p>With everything else equal, lens will have no effect as many have already said. But the exposure will. Another question, how do you view the pictures? From Raw or Jpg, with what processing. Did you have Active D-lighting on? That can really create differences in different scenes. What camera do you use? I also still have to submit a question to the forum about differences in exposure I noticed. Even with everything fixed. You can see the difference by having the histogram on while shooting, it will give a certain exposure and then during review later the histogram will have changed. I want to do some retesting under controlled conditions someday.</p>

<p>Hi, I hope you do realize that you are at f5.6 already with that combination, which is where most camera's already have problems, most of the time only the cross type sensors still work well enough and only when you have some light available and a contrasty subject. It sounds like an intermittent problem which might be caused by different contrast in subjects, or that you are not always using the cross type sensors. It might also be that there is a contact problem in your TC, do you have the same problem without the TC or with the TC on another lens?</p>

<p>Are we allowed to discuss rumours? Hopefully the boss doesn't catch us.<br>

What is your main problem? seems to be reliability and possibly FX format.<br>

I think waiting for a possible D600 could be nice for the FX route, but reliability wise it would probably not be an upgrade, but you would have the D90 as backup. It will probably not be instantly available and a bit pricy in the first months.</p>

<p>On the other hand, the D400 is likely to be quite expensive and mostly will have improved resolution and iso performance, things you might not need in your studio setup. I think a (used) D300(s) might be a better step depending on what is most important to you. Waiting a little bit for the D400 might be good for D300 price drops.</p>

<p>Or go the D7000 route for extra resolution if that is desired. I don't think you can really go wrong with any of the options. From another happy D90 user ( almost 60000 on the counter and just the thumb rubber needs replacement).</p>

<p>@Zack, I work in electronics and I have never heard of CPU's that get slower when they age,<br>

some break (very rarely) and then they stop, but there is no reason for it to slow down as far as I know. (flash) memory can have trouble when it gets used a lot and can get slower because of fragmentation and checksums because of error spots, but the SD card is easy to replace and the internal flash only gets updated once or twice max with firmware upgrades. It is not like a windows machine that gets updates and installs all the time which can slow things down. I think maybe it is a perceived slowness, because faster alternatives become more common.</p>

 

<p>I agree with the 'overkill' comments and that P&S's have become much better.<br>

But a point may be, do you expect them to continu with photography? Why do you ask this question in the Nikon forum? Maybe because you have Nikon and some nice lenses they could use. What lenses do you have if so and depending on the type, some cameras (D90/D7000) could be more interesting than a D3200 or D5100 because they will not autofocus with older lenses. Just a thought.</p>

<p>hi,<br>

maybe its my ignorance, but everybody is saying this is ok and there is no problem,<br>

but if you look closely enough would this not create a small amount of aperture variation (and resulting exposure variation) since the aperture is controlled by a lever that is positioned correctly (or incorrectly) by the rotation on the mount?</p>

<p>Shun, they do make lens copies, I just bought this nice 24-70mm F2.8 for a few bucks. I was a bit disappointed, the plastic is already peeling off, the labels are crooked and in a slightly different color. It does have a nice coffee function. <br>

On a more serious matter, I bought a Meike battery grip (labeled as Meike, not Nikon) and it has been working without a problem for some years already. I have compared it side-by-side with a Nikon one and except for the label you would not be able to tell them apart. They come so close you would suspect it to come from the same factory. Is it still a 'copy' then?</p><div></div>

<p>About the CFL's, I think there is a big variety in quality and stability.<br>

Maybe that is also why Nikon cannot just make a preset, because the range is too big. I think they just pick an average WB that will be ok for everything, but not great for anything but that exact value.<br>

I don't think the custom presets are that hard, at least on my D90 I have an option to directly choose a Kelvin value (with the second wheel) or to select a sample picture of something gray to set the value (hold WB button for 1.5 seconds when on the PRE WB). Just ran into this at a photoclub yesterday. Also in the shooting menu or something, you can then select any of 5 previous presets. But maybe this is not what you meant.<br>

I think some specific lights (Like LEDs for example and light temperatures that will vary depending on the phase in the mains cycle) will always give problems with lighting for photos.</p>

 

<p>Better get another remote or camera, as guys above have said, the two are not compatible:<br>

<a href="http://www.nikonusa.com/Nikon-Products/Product/Remote-Cords/4730/ML-L3-Wireless-Remote-Control-(Infrared).html#tab-ProductDetail-ProductTabs-CompatibleWith">http://www.nikonusa.com/Nikon-Products/Product/Remote-Cords/4730/ML-L3-Wireless-Remote-Control-(Infrared).html#tab-ProductDetail-ProductTabs-CompatibleWith</a><br>

Also make sure you try at another location before the trip, have a small flashlight and keep in mind that batteries have less power at low temperatures, It wouldn't surprise me that the battery will be drained on the second picture noise reduction cycle.</p>

<p>This sounds like a bad store and something fishy is going on.<br>

Camera is probably already used/registered/damaged or something and He figured you are probably not a 'stupid' enough buyer to go for that. He is looking for someone with money that doesn't really know what to check. I would run away from the store.</p>

<p>As mentioned, I think something 50 and higher is needed for that kind of work. I think the Sigma 50-150 F2.8 fits, but it is sort of in between versions. Maybe Eric can give some info on it's useability for concerts. There is supposed to come a new version with Image Stabilizer, but I don't think it is available yet.</p>

<p>I have an older (non-D) push pull version on the D90 and that has terribly slow focus, I think the D version is different in that regard. So make sure you at least get the D version.</p>

<p>I agree with Lisa that the F2.8 aperture is not always helpful because of the limited depth of field. The nice picture Gary posted also looks like suffering more from DOF issues than motion blur issues, but it's not easy to see at this size, so maybe I'm mistaken.<br>

@200m F2.8 and 10 meters distance, the DOF will only be 28cm according to <a href="http://www.dofmaster.com">www.dofmaster.com</a>. Maybe besides the great new lens you got, a step towards a D90 or D7000 might be helpfull. Don't think you are trying simple things, pictures like that are not easy even under the best circumstances. I personally would not mind the blurry toes as in Gary's picture. Good luck </p>

<p>Dieter, that sigma 17-17 should be a prime then?<br>

I have heard very good things about the tamron 17-50mm F2.8, but I have not seen it on a D7000 so far. Depending on the situation, but F2.8 over the whole range can be more helpful than an image stabilizer. I would just get one lens for now, with the 2.8 there is enough to experiment with for now and the D7000 alone will already take up a lot of time to get to know. You can always decide later what is best to add. The 10-24mm is great (I have it on the D90) but the price is a bit high just to see if you will like it (I do). So experiment with the single lens for a few months and then go to a shop to try some other options. Also don't underestimate the benefits of an external flash as james mentioned (depending on the situations you will use it for of course)</p>

<p>Hi Rodeo Joe,<br>

did not mean to confuse things, but just wanted to warn the OP that getting into macro photography takes some additional attention that he might not have been aware of. It would be ashamed if he would buy a nice lens and finds out later there might be lighting, alignment, reflection and distance to subject problems. I always like to know what I'm getting into when I buy something new.<br>

Regarding the cropping, what I meant was that if the requirement for the final picture is just that it should fill the complete picture, this does not say anything about resolution and sharpness of the final picture. Although I can understand that this 'CSI' application calls for highest resolution possible. This was not specified and my only thought was that if you require only for example a 2+ Megapixel sharp picture, you can crop quite a lot from your 12Megapixel original, as long as it is sharp to start with.<br>

I just got a PB6 bellows for myself and that gives a d-o-f almost as thin as the fingerprints ;-)</p>

<p>besides lens choices (I think I might choose the 85mm for the VR if you are not using tripod or flash). Having to fill a picture with a fingerprint does not necessarily mean you have to go to 1:1. There is cropping. Getting the picture sharp in the first place is much more important. This means you will have to know a lot about your depth of field. Changing from normal distances to macro distances reduces your depth of field greatly. For fingerprints you can get parallel to the print to get everything sharp, but then sometimes you end up with a lot of reflections. You will have to know at which apertures and angles you get the whole picture sharp.</p>

<p>At that distance and aperture, I think the focus depth is only a few millimeters.</p>

 

<p>Hi,<br>

I bought the 10-24mm for a trip to marocco this year, not knowing if I would like it (only had 18 and up before that) and I love it. I use it for 25-50% of the shots now, sometimes more.<br>

The range is great, very usefull for architecture, cityscapes, etc, food and flowers depending on how you like things to look, not so much for portraits and pets (gives a lot of perspective distortion which can look funny, but not what people wanna see most of the time). Be prepared to have to get to know the wide angle usage, because it is a little different. Keep camera very straight for smallest distortion.<br>

I bet you can already take good enough pictures with the gear range you have, so in stead of improving that gear, I would extend your range with a wide angle.</p><div></div>