kevin_beretta

And of course, the day my GPS unit arrives, Lightroom no longer supports maps. In a fully paid version no less. A holes... Version 6.1 is the last one I will own then I'll look for something else. Map is no longer supported in this version of Lightroom

FedEx brought presents early today.... :-) I'm amazed how well this is designed. I am in a 17th story building (of 21) and it got a fix just sitting on my desk in under a minute. Smaller than I expected. Not hard to mount either.

I tried synching with Snapbridge (useless), synching with my Garmin 60csx (works, heavier to carry, many more steps, GPS data only in xmp not in RAW file). Dawntech is dedicated, set and forget. Wish I did it a long time ago.

Thanks for the reply Erik and Andrew. Erik, did your GPS start working again as you intended when you were away from the border region? Or was it constantly on and providing a fix? Did it stop providing a fix? When it is red, as per the manual, it means it's always on. Not a surprise really if you see what is going on up there re China. I do generally take very good care of my camera gear and it seems there will be lots of room in the area of the bag where it sits so as to not touch anything else. I too will likely leave it on the camera once installed. If it's as sensitive as promised then it really will pick up signals most anywhere. I just yesterday returned from a month in Chiang Mai, taking lots of pictures and touring around a bit. I wish I had the GPS unit before this trip ... oh well, it'll do its job next Oct/Nov on my Nepal trip and in the mean time around Vancouver. Thanks Andrew for the mounting concerns; it's going on the D850. I rarely use a remote (and use the Bluetooth option now if needed) so likely not much else will go into that socket.

Thanks Erik for the info on Dawntech. My pro 2 DC unit will arrive in a few days. I read the manual but it's not clear to me what the benefit is of the digital compass. Any idea? How does it show up in EXIF data? Thanks, Kevin

Flying with battery operated equipment can make things weird. Clean the battery terminals and charge the batteries, even if it looks they don't need it.

I got a nice surprise yesterday. Back when I had the D700, I played with a 10 stop ND filter for a bit. The fact you had to focus manually, then screw the filter on etc. was a bit annoying so I put it aside. With the focus shift option and some delay in taking the pictures as options on the D850, I was trying to mimic some of the ND filter behavior. In comparing results and experimenting, I found that the 10 stop ND filter allows the D850 to accurately focus without having to remove the filter first. So now it's suddenly a lot more useful and fun to tinker with that. The light meter also works well with the ND filter, so no more guess work there either.

"Who's Zed?" "Zed's dead babe.... Zed's dead"

I found that to truly turn Bluetooth off, you need to turn wifi on first, then select Bluetooth off, then turn wifi off. Otherwise Bluetooth is grayed out and trying to turn it off says it's not available for the current state of the camera. It shows off but is in sleep state, not disabled. Unless it's disabled, my Android still sees it, even after I recycled the Android as well. I also turned off / disabled the GPS options for the external plug in, turned off setting the time from gps/satellite etc. I turned off marking the pictures for upload as well. I "only" lost 1% charge in the last 3 days since I did all this. I also deleted all the Snapbridge crap from my tablet. If I need GPS locations with my pics I'll do it the old way, throw the Garmin 60 csx in my camera bag and merge the gpx file in LightRoom. I did not test the ports but industry standard enabled BLE (Bluetooth Light) is to activate WOL (Wake on LAN - when the LAN is activated, the machine wakes up). Unless specifically turned off, there will always be some drain. I hope my settings did this but Nikon could have documented it better. The UK sites actually states it drains the battery: By maintaining a constant, automatic connection between your camera and your smart device, SnapBridge gives you easy control over your photographic life. Now you can sync images to your smartphone or tablet while you shoot, and share Nikon quality images in an instant. You can also control key camera functions via your phone, keep your camera on time and up-to-date, and more. You don’t need to worry about battery life. Unless SnapBridge is actively syncing images, it utilises Bluetooth® low energy (BLE) for negligible drain. Nikon Snapbridge Software | Sync Camera Photos to PC Here's a good overview too: New Nikon cameras to use Bluetooth for ‘always on’ pairing, photo transfer The other thing to do to reduce drain apparently is to turn off the touch screen. That will be my next step.

That seems like a lot of shots indeed ... thanks for reporting back. On the 6th I went through the camera as reported earlier and turned everything off that could even be marginally suspected of keeping the GPS port or the Bluetooth LE on. So far, the camera still sits at 98% after dropping by 2% due to legitimate photography.

I went through the setup again and turned everything off. Bluetooth can indeed be turned off separately once the airplane mode is turned off. Turn airplane mode off, then disable Bluetooth, turn airplane mode back on. I also stopped the camera from flagging new pictures for upload. Turned off time update from external GPS (although I don't have one) and a few other things. I had a 100% charged battery on the shelf, popped that one in, checked it was 100%. Turned camera off. We'll see in a few days. The battery that came out of it had 5 shots and was 95% full. Both batteries are Feb 2018 vintage, so basically new.

Thanks Shun. All variables aside (I read on another forum that turning off the touch screen seems to reduce drain significantly) my main goal is to chase down the reason why the battery would drain at all when the camera is off, wifi is set to off etc. Stopping the battery from draining whilst in the camera bag and unused, with Bluetooth and Wifi off is what I want to see solved. All the rest (GPS, movies, chimping,...) are user choices. Off = off :-)

I raised a question in the "Nikon D850, Early Impressions" thread about battery drain usage (fewer photos per charge). I am not the only one experiencing this. It seems to be related to Bluetooth LE; batteries drain when the camera is not in use, even when wifi and Bluetooth or "Off". Can we continue the discussion here? I want to lift this issue out of the old thread (link below) so it gets some proper exposure. Nikon D850, Early Impressions

Hmmm.. it seems Bluetooth LE does stay in listening mode (looking at some industry forums). "Off" just means it won't pair. It can still spy on you ... it works like an RFID when off.

Thanks for the data point Ilkka. That somewhere mimics my experience. I think the LE Bluetooth is indeed what maybe hampering us. It's the same with Android tables ... no way to shut the drain 100%. Very annoying but I guess you can at least remove the battery in the D850. Does anyone know how long the onboard battery lasts before needing a charge?

Shun, maybe tell your Nikon contacts we need a firmware fix for this?

Both batteries are new. I've not recorded more than 2 mins of video, not interested in that at all.

So after a number of months and thousands of shots, I must say I like this camera more and more. The one thing that is a step back is the battery usage. I get maybe 250-300 shots out of a charge, if that. Rear display is off unless activated. With the D700 I would get 3 times that .... Maybe it's the way it is. Same behavior on both batteries, both real Nikon batteries. The batteries also run down when not used. Often I will see 94% or so when they were added to the camera a few days earlier after a full charge. They were 100% when they went in. Wifi is off etc. No extraneous usage or "leakage" that I can think of.

Ah .. we went from cameras and resolution to storage. As long as your stuff is in 0's and 1's, there are a host of good options these days. Multi offsite mirroring and a local NAS provide all the backup you need... and these days it's dirt cheap too ($10/month for limitless offsite storage).

I shot it with a 105 2.5 Micro Nikkor. The stacked image has no EXIF data. It ended up being 256MB in size. I dumped the original shots so have no real idea. I think it was f5.6 Yes, however you can elect to apply some EXIF in Zerene but I haven't bothered to figure out how yet. The step size varies with the distance, angle etc. Here's some more reading: What formula is used to create the lens focus scale?: Nikon FX SLR (DF, D1-D5, D600-D850) Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review

Two more shots ... One is a blue heron I took today. The only thing I did to this was mute the blown highlights (-21) and crop it a bit. Nothing else was touched. The way this camera renders colors is out of this world … 64ISO, 200 mm, f2.8, 1/125. I figure I was about 30 feet away. http://fotoni.ca/other/blueheron.jpg This one is a stack ... I'm getting better at Zerene stacker... It's a memorial glass, a solid blob of glass with some blue stuff in it. The wavy lines are remnants of a cremation. This really shows off the through and through sharpness you can get with focus stacking. It's really stupidly simple too ... set the camera, flip the eyepiece shut and wait 2 mins and all your pics are done, made in complete silence. Throw into Zerene, press go. Wait. Marvel. http://fotoni.ca/other/dust.jpg

Well if anyone in the Vancouver area needs a D700 ... let me know :-)

Thank you Mike! Definitely a case of RTFM ... I had totally missed the fact there is an entirely different set of focus options for Live View.. gawd! All good now :-) I have to say, this camera is one hell of a piece of work. I read a South African website last night going into the minutia of all the various AF options and when to use what. A LOT of thought has been put into this camera.

Hi Andrew, I have not tried to set it to AF-On only, but that is an idea. When set to Silent mode and the Lv button is pressed, it wants to focus as you move the camera around, like it's on auto focus. Not touching the release button at all. Probably a PICNIC error but again the manual is not helpful. When you want it to stop doing things, like adjusting focus as you move the thing around, the only option I found so far is to simply turn the camera off. Setting silent mode to "Off" does not turn it off strangely, it keeps going. Silent mode is nice but you need to hold the LCD up to eye level or tilt the screen. Clicking the LCD anywhere where you want to focus and take a picture does just that. Touch the screen, release your finger and it takes a shot. It works a treat and it's of course 100% quiet. I've been playing more with focus stacking. I think it's fast becoming my new hobby. You really need a 4K monitor for this one: http://fotoni.ca/other/dust.jpg

No sure who else here has a D850... I am trying to figure out two things: Is there a way to program the fn2 button for anything else than rating, menu or "my menu"? Seems like a waste of space .... I had hoped to set it to the auto-level. When shooting in Silent mode 1 or 2, not Q mode, how do you stop the camera from trying to keep focusing when you are done shooting? Turning it off seems aggressive. "Ok" or other buttons seem to have no effect. The manual is silent on both topics.