Third-party converters for Coolpix 8800?

On Sat, 08 Jan 2005 19:05:17 -0500, Ed Ruf
wrote:

On Sun, 09 Jan 2005 00:43:26 +0100, in rec.photo.digital.zlr Jan Böhme
wrote:

Time has come to upgrade my old Nikon Coolpix 995. It isn't so much
the 3 MP as the shutter lag that I'm fed up with. I originally thought
of geting a DSLR, but I have decided that I can wait for a couple of
new models still of those, and by a zlr while I wait.

If shutter lag is your main gripe, you are aware you're not going to get
much better with the 8800, right?

Well, it isn't only that, come to think about it. I'm also sick and
tired of the faded washed-out colours and the constant blatant
underexposure at less light than full sunlight that the auto settings
provide. Sure, I can manually set just about everything. But a
point-and-shoot camera where any pictures in automatic modes have to
be given at least a brightness +30; contrast +12 adjustment in
Photoshop starts to wear on you after three years. And with that
amount of purple fringing, I feel that I at least deserve a much
longer zoom than it has as a compensation :-) And the teleconverter is
bulky and very difficcult to focus just right.

As for the shutter lag, I know that Phil Askey measured a shutter
release lag of 0,1 seconds when he reviewed it at dpreview.com, but
I'm at a total loss of understanding how he could arrive at
thisfigure. My average shutter release lag with the c995, when
seemingly fully autofocussed, is between 0,2 and 0,5 seconds - always
in the upper part of the interval if I'm using the built-in flash -
_way_ too slow to capture a fleeting smile.

If the c8800 is similar to this in real life, then of course I won't
get what I'm looking for. I sort of surmised that because everybody
talks so much about the decreased shutter lags in modern
point-and-shoot cameras, this must mean that the figures quoted now
are real figures. But if they aren't, or if you only acheive them if
you shoot in arcane ways and modes that I never do, then of course I'm
done for.

Jan Böhme
Korrekta personuppgifter är att betrakta som journalistik.
Felaktigheter utgör naturligtvis skönlitteratur.

Time has come to upgrade my old Nikon Coolpix 995. It isn't so much
the 3 MP as the shutter lag that I'm fed up with. I originally thought
of geting a DSLR, but I have decided that I can wait for a couple of
new models still of those, and by a zlr while I wait.

I'm hesitating between the Panasonic FZ20 and Nikon Coolpix 8800. I do
a bit of bird-shooting, and would love to do more on-the-fly, so a
long tele zoom and IS is a must. On the other hand I like to shoot
people without them being aware of my shooting them, for more natural
expressions, particularly in boys from six to sixteen or so. This
could of course be done with the tele zoom, but at closer quarters, an
LCD display on twistable hinge - or the swivel construction of my old
c995 - helps _a lot_. I'm actually leaning towards the 8800 primarily
for this reason, although it is almost $500 more expensive - here in
Sweden anyway - and has a shorter tele zoom which is slower at the
tele end and dosen't seem to be better optically, either. (The other
advantages with the c8800 are nice, but not a priority.) If this is
silly, then somebody please tell me off - and explain why it is silly.

However, a 35 mm equivalent of 380 mm - or even the 438 mm of the FZ20
- isn't all that much for shooting birds, so a teleconverter would be
handy. (Indeed, I have Nikon's 3x teleconverter fr my c995, so I know
that there are lots of things you can't shoot even with 456 mm for
focal range reasons alone) and 38 mm is not wide angle, really, but
just on the wide side of normal, so a wide angle converter would come
in handy too, come to think about it.

Now, both the c8800 and the FZ20 have dedicated teleconverters, but
they are quite expensive. I saw in another thread that one could use
the considerably cheaper Olympus TLC-17 for FZ20. Are there any
cheaper teleconverters around that would work - and give a decent
result - on a Coolpix 8800?

Jan Böhme
Korrekta personuppgifter är att betrakta som journalistik.
Felaktigheter utgör naturligtvis skönlitteratur.

Jan Böhme wrote:
Time has come to upgrade my old Nikon Coolpix 995. It isn't so much
the 3 MP as the shutter lag that I'm fed up with. I originally thought
of geting a DSLR, but I have decided that I can wait for a couple of
new models still of those, and by a zlr while I wait.
[]

I have seen good reports of the 8800 - although the shutter lag does not
seem as low as the 8400. We have both the 5700 and FZ20, and the FZ20 is
a delight to use and produces excellent results. The lower cost and wider
aperture lens were the reasons for choosing the FZ20 (it is primarily for
a one-off holiday and could be discarded afterwards). How good is the
manual focussing on the 8800? On the FZ20 it's great and easy - the
central part of the viewfinder gets magnified to make any adjustments
obvious.

By the way, your 995 shouldn't be producing under-exposed or washed-out
images - sounds like you have the settings wrong.

My own policy is /not/ to use converters - they are bulky and
inconvenient - but I can see that you might need them. The slightly
greater zoom of the FZ20 means that it would get almost as many pixels
across the actual subject as the 8800, if both were at maximum zoom (5 *
(432/350)^2).

I know what you mean about the swivel. I used to use a 990 (like your
995) and found the arrangement very convenient. The swivel LCD on the
5700 is almost as good, though. However, I was going to suggest you
consider two cameras - keep your 995 for candids (or upgrade to something
wider-angled - the Nikon 8400 has a 24mm FOV which may produce more
"involved" shots...), and get the cheaper FZ20 purely for telephoto. They
are both light enough that carrying both would probably still be less
bother than a DSLR and its peripherals!

Cheers,
David